14

The roiling, amorphous mass of, what Demi could only describe as, brown goo within the vat bubbled and gurgled toward Friss and the captain shook his head. He looked over to the arena pit, where several assistants were alternately hosing down the the walls and floor and vomiting, adding more unpleasant fluids and partly digested food to the already viscera coated surroundings. Demi wasn't even certain there were enough pieces left that were large enough to be called body parts any more.

"Eight-hundred billion Galactic Credits and two percent of all gate receipts, gambling subsidies, pay-per-view numbers and merchandising rights. In perpetuity. Anything less and I'll be slitting my own throat." From a corner, where another pair of assistants with hoses were washing the blood from Lap, an irritated tearing sound erupted, causing Friss to pause, scowl, throw his hands up in defeat and turn back to the vat. "Fine. Apparently I don't 'own' Lap, which is news to me. So, no deal. Tell me what I need to know, or Lap does another ... lap in your arena."

The mass of gelatinous liquid almost boiled, bubbles floating to the surface, ripples forming and bouncing from ripples. Friss lifted a booted foot onto the edge of the vat and gave the mass his coldest, most unwavering glare. Spoiled by the increased amount of blinking his eyes had to make as the fumes from the vat stung them. The mass settled after a while and a single bubble popped to the surface.

"What is he saying? Did you just try to sell Lap?" Another sound of furious tearing came from Lap and even the water from the hoses appeared to step back. Demi would never forget what she had seen in that arena. "How do you keep understanding these people? Why are there no translation protocols that work? Why is Lap so very, very scary while being absolutely adorable and kind? Why?"

Demi had managed to connect to Gal-Net within the confines of the arena, deep in the bowels of Banks Space Station. A consequence of the fights being transmitted around the galaxy for the delight and delectation of billions of lifeforms that craved blood and death but were far too timid and, or, lazy to involve themselves in something even close to real violence. Yet, still, she had found it difficult, impossible even, to find any way of translating Lap, or, as it turned out, the bubbling, rippling, gurgling language of The Great Spituan, Lord and Master of the Blood Trials and Chief Operating Officer of a company that sold beads for craftwork.

A small, thin, sliver of goo lifted from the surface of the vat. It appeared to struggle, for a second, like a headless snake struggling to lift its head, ready to bite an unwary leg that had the audacity to pass within several feet of it, without the requisite fangs. The sliver flopped on to the edge of the vat and then wriggled until it reached a tiny console, where the tendril of goo dropped upon one button before flopping back into the vat, becoming one again with the rest of the brown sludge.

"Please accept my apologies, my dear. One is not accustomed to speaking with others that are unfortunately bereft of innate translation talents. I beg your forgiveness for my most ignorant pretermit." Demi blinked at the refined voice that emerged from the inbuilt speakers on the vat. It was, in a very objective sense, one of the sexiest voices she had ever heard. "Allow me to make amends. Armagnac, be a sweet and bring the lady a chair with a heated massage seat and an aperitif. Do you prefer red, white, or puce wine?"

"Puce?" Demi had never heard of that kind of wine, but her question was taken as an answer to The Great Spituan's question and Armagnac, the tiny rodent waiter scurried away before she could change her mind.

"Look, Spitty, we need that information." Friss had maintained his booted foot upon the side of the vat during that entire conversation, his leg wobbling as he tried to hold his balance, leaning one elbow on his knee. "Where is Bognrd BloodRage?"

The Great Spituan began to bubble once again, but this time he wasn't speaking. It looked more like enraged annoyance at some uncouth outsider dirtying the edge of his vat and derailing a rather flirty exchange. Demi had no idea why she got that impression from a few bubbles, but she did. Friss looked either unaware of the annoyed bubbling, or didn't care. He glared into the goo of The Great Spituan as though engaged in a staring contest.

Demi heard a laboured scraping sound. She had heard it for a number of seconds, but the intensity of Friss' gaze and the furious bubbling of The Great Spituan had caught her attention. The next thing she knew, the back of her legs were prodded, forcing her to fall back into the luxurious comfort of a leather chair that immediately began to warm her buttocks while massaging them and her back in a most pleasurable fashion. Most pleasurable. She accepted the wine glass from Armagnac, the rodent waiter, and drank a sip of the wine. It certainly was puce.

"Very well! It was to my utmost disappointment that Bognrd left my services. Oh, quite the disappointment. He was, perhaps, the most talented being I had ever had the pleasure of keeping within my employ. He entertained many and he was, and still is, sorely missed." A larger bubble than any other rose to the surface of The Great Spituan, rested there for a second and then popped. It sounded like a sigh. "Were it not for the attentions of War Garbler Tonbush, I would still have Bognrd here, doing what he does best."

Even Demi had heard of War Garbler Tonbush, though few had ever met him. A being destined to become the greatest warrior in the history of the galaxy. A being so suited to warfare, it was said that he was born with a blaster in one hand and a tactical nuclear grenade in the other. That was said by the surgeon who had, by order of Tonbush's mother, surgically implanted the weapons for that very birthing event story to occur. A being, so genetically predisposed to ultra-violence that he had, as a toddler, beaten every single first-person shooting game that had ever been designed, winning every tournament in between feeding and changing nappies. A being without a war to fight because pretty much everyone thought the entire thing a waste of time these days.

Demi couldn't begin to imagine what such a man could do with someone of Bognrd's talents. Lap had, systematically, killed, sliced, diced, dismembered, decapitated, eviscerated and generally performed truly awful and horrific acts within the arena pit. The kind of things that Demi would never be able to erase from her mind, even if she had an industrial grade retro-de-memoriser running constantly, wiping her memories every second for the rest of her life. And The Great Spituan had called Bognrd the most talented being he had ever had in his employ. It was enough to make her shiver in terror. But that may have just been the heated, massaging seat that had worked oh-so-well.

"That's great! Just great!" Friss took his foot from the edge of The Great Spituan's vat and shook Lap's two-dimensional hand as the Planeian returned after their thorough cleaning. Lap rustled toward Demi. "What? Yeah. I suppose so. Demi, start work on finding War Garbler Tonbush. Meanwhile, Lap and I need to find an anti-grav fork truck to move Lap's prize to Lodka. We'll meet you back at the ship."

Before Demi could protest, Friss and Lap had left the arena. She had considered jumping up and following them but the heated, massaging seat had reached a crucial, leg-trembling point in its cycle and she wasn't going anywhere. Not until she had caught her breath, at least. The puce wine also held her attention. A concoction both sweet and sour, with hints of chicken and bra straps. It was exquisite.

After the massaging plateaued, Demi finally felt able to concentrate once more. With a satisfied grin, she relaxed back into the chair and began to access Gal-Net, her implant connecting with ease and allowing her to become one with the torrents of information that flashed through the galaxy at incredible speeds.

She didn't know how the implant worked, it just did. A technology smuggled from a backwards planet of Earth-That-Was colonists that had stumbled on the remains of an ancient alien culture, upon a world where, literally, everything wanted to kill them. They had squirrelled themselves away in the only secure place on the planet, isolating themselves from the galaxy at large. If, that was, the general population knew about the thronging, packed and vibrant cultures beyond their own strange existence at all. It had taken some doing, a lot of favours and a lot of money to get that implant.

Even with the implant, however, Demi had trouble finding exactly where War Garbler Tonbush had secreted himself away. There were rumours of him surfacing in various parts of the galaxy, threatening war, posturing, poking people constantly to see just how annoyed they would need to be to fight back. All for nothing, it seemed, as most cultures simply activated their planetary defence systems, raised their immensely powerful planetary shields and told War Garbler Tonbush, in no uncertain terms, to bugger off.

"If you like, I could tell you exactly where to find the chap." Two slivers of The Great Spituan's brown, amorphous mass had laid along the edge of the vat, like crossed arms, as another raised up, tilting as though it looked at Demi. "For the pleasure of your company at dinner, perhaps? The menu isn't what it once was, but we do soldier on. Armagnac may look like a filthy denizen of sewers, but he is a competent chef. Quid pro quo?"

Demi considered the offer. However a shifting mass of sentient goo happened to eat, it couldn't possibly be as sickening, as purely horrific, as mind scorchingly awful as what she had witnessed within the arena pit below, as Lap had dispatched, with ease and delight, every creature they had sent against them. Watching Lap crack open the granite-skinned Krakoan would give Demi nightmares for years to come.

It couldn't possibly be worse and may actually turn out quite pleasant. The Great Spituan was, after all, quite a refined mass of brown goo. She started the longer, higher intensity cycle upon the heated, massaging chair and sat back, holding out her glass for a refill of puce wine, enjoying the real leather of the chair and wondering where in the galaxy they had got the real leather from.