17

Friss posed. Stood with his feet apart, one arm across his chest, the elbow of the other resting upon it, the hand rubbing his chin in thought, Friss scowled, furrowed his brow, raised one of those eyebrows, tilted his head and then raised his chin as though he had suddenly caught the scent of something he couldn't quite recognise. He then stared into the distance, spoiled only by Reagatcher tossing a bowl of soup on the floor and cursing all children.

"This is fine." The other residents of the retirement planet had begun to find weapons from various hiding places and Friss took little notice, apart from stealing one rather nasty looking rifle from a pair of arthritic hands as the one called Doris tottered by. "I planned for this. Well, not this exactly. Well, not anything near to this, but I have plans. Plans can be adjusted. Here. Hold this."

Friss slipped the strap of the rifle over his head with one hand as he held off Doris with his other. Once the rifle was secure against his back, he pulled something from his pocket. It looked squelchy and vaguely organic. Like a ball of moss with huge eyes and no other discernible features. He held out the moss to Demi and she absolutely refused to touch it, the eyes of the moss-thing staring at her, looking as though the little creature were about to erupt in tears.

"I'm not touching that." She stepped back and, for good measure, stepped back again, but Friss matched her steps, shaking the moss creature at her. "Whatever it is, it's going to be horrible."

"No it's not." Friss removed his hand from Doris' forehead, stepped to the side and the old warrior woman fell face first upon the plush carpet. With a move so fast, Demi almost didn't see it, Friss grabbed Demi's hand, slapping the moss creature into her palm. "Lodka! Testing transport Meep! Now, Demi, poke one eye for regular transport, both for emergency transport and squeeze the entire Meep for 'Get me the hell out of here before I die!' transport. Okay? Good. Find Bognrd. Bring him home. Lodka, send Demi to Tonbush's ship. Pronto."

As Friss spoke, he poked first one eye of the moss creature that he had called a 'transport Meep'. When his finger poked the eye, the creature made a pained, sorrowful 'meep' sound. Then he poked both eyes and the creature meeped even more loudly and more pathetically. Then he squeezed the entire creature and it screamed a meep that almost made Demi feel sorry for it. Actually, no almost. She wanted to free the Meep from this cruel life.

"Wait! Send me to Tonbush's ship?" Demi began to panic at what Friss suggested. "And find Bognrd? Why me? How am I supposed to ...?"

Friss had stepped back, grinning and waving and the last thing Demi saw before everything became really weird, was Lap, carrying the donkey under one incredibly thin arm and Reagatcher under the other, the former warlord's legs kicking frantically in the air. That wasn't the weird part.

The weird part came when everything appeared to condense into a tiny little hole, into which she found herself being sucked into like milkshake through a straw. The entire retirement facility, Friss, Lap, Reagatcher and the prone Doris, among all the other people, simply disappeared. Everything became a murky brown colour and Demi felt as though she were moving, though her legs felt as though she had stood in cement for far too long.

When the murky brown colour, of wherever it was she found herself, started to become a spiral and then a blaze of light, she popped back into reality like toothpaste being squirted from a tube and she decided she was never going to squeeze a toothpaste tube ever again. When her eyes became adjusted to the light of her surroundings, she could tell she was no longer on the retirement planet. She had emerged ... elsewhere.

An elsewhere that was surprisingly cramped but, she noted, incredibly clean. Were it not for the severely restricted height of the corridor she had arrived into, she would have classed this as something more akin to what she actually expected of space ships. All clean, straight lines, white walls with shining, flashing panels that gave out information about things that Demi had no understanding of whatsoever. It looked efficient. It looked professional and not at all like the squalid conditions Zapasnoy had become, nor like the faintly stomach-turning, flesh-like appearance of Lodka.

It was a proper spaceship. If proper spaceships were designed for people half Demi's height. More than once, already, she had hit her head upon the ceiling of the corridor, and, with no other recourse, she decided to fall to her hands and knees and crawl along the floor. As she did so, she heard a muffled 'meep' and realised she had almost squashed the little moss creature. For now, she placed the Meep into a pouch upon her belt. The last thing she saw before closing the flap were those huge eyes, pleading with her. As though she didn't feel bad enough already.

In the meantime, she had started to hear other noises coming from elsewhere within the ship, voices echoing along the pristine, excessively sanitised corridors. Loud voices that didn't sound friendly. Demi shuffled on her hands and knees, turning in a circle and trying to find somewhere to crawl-run to, but, behind her, she found only an airlock door and, beyond that door, the outer door. Through the window on that door, she caught glimpses of lines upon lines of little drone ships. They did not look cute.

"Now, look here! You are ordered to continue your mission, BloodRage!" Mention of the name caused Demi to circle back around on her hands and knees. "Perform the duties you were paid handsomely for, or face the wrath of me! War Garbler Tonbush, son of Reagatcher, Terror of the Galaxy, Overlord of Everything and Chief Principle of the Association of Galactic Improv Troupes. Do you want me to 'muah-ha-ha'? Because I will, if you force me!"

"WORM! I AM BOGNRD BLOODRAGE! KREPPLARK OF THE KOLOTH-KANGKOR! YOU INSULT ME WITH THESE CONDITIONS! YOU ABUSE MY TALENTS WITH YOUR PITIFUL MEWLINGS AND MEDIOCRE REQUESTS!" As soon as Demi heard that thunderous voice, she spun back around on her hands and knees and began scrabbling for the pouch with the Meep inside. Friss could come get Bognrd if he wanted to. "BEGONE, FOUL STRIPLING! I HAVE NO WISH TO REMAIN IN YOUR EMPLOY!"

Gathering up her legs, pressing herself against the airlock door, Demi had retrieved the Meep from the pouch and now held it atop her flattened palm. She looked at the Meep. The Meep looked at her. The Meep's eyes began to water. Then tremble. The finger Demi had held pointing towards the Meep's eye began to tremble, too. She knew that this was the Meep's purpose. However it worked, the Meep connected to Lodka. Poking the creature's eyes told Lodka to transport Demi back to the organic ship.

She couldn't do it. Replacing the Meep back into the pouch, she looked into the airlock, hoping to find some kind of EVA suit, but there was nothing there. She had to think. One thought occurred to her and she connected to Gal-Net through the shiny ship's network. She had taken notes about the internal structure she had already seen and used that to cross-reference any other ships in its class. If she could find another ship like it, she could download the schematics, find the storage area, or similar, and find an EVA suit. She couldn't find another ship like it.

In fact, the closest thing she could find was a toy spaceship marketed by IBTST Corp, and that ship only had three corridors, one bridge and one cargo bay and that couldn't possibly work because it had no space for engines or living quarters.

"Do not separate this cargo bay! I'm warning you, Bognrd!" Something sounded odd about that voice. It sounded artificial. Or, at least, heavily modified. "Do not close that bulkhead! Bognrd! Bognrd!"

The sound of a bulkhead hissing closed upon pneumatic pistons reached Demi's ears. Some cargo bays did, indeed, have the ability to eject from the rest of the ship. It ensured that whatever a ship carried, it wouldn't blow up when whatever super-luminal drive the ship happened to, what some people laughingly called, operate decided it had had enough of whizzing around the galaxy and wouldn't life be so much easier if everyone were reduced to their constituent atoms and sub-atomic particles instead? It would, some philosophers had speculated, make the galaxy a far more equitable place.

"Alright! This is your final warning, Bognrd! Do not retract the restraining bolts!" The sound of restraining bolts becoming retracted reached Demi's ears. "Fine! But if you fire the ejection thrusters, I'll ... Damn it, Bognrd! Who's going to make my soup now?"

The entire ship shuddered as Bognrd, apparently, fired the ejection thrusters, sending the cargo bay, in its entirety, shooting off and away, into the inky blackness of space. Soon, after a few orbits, the cargo bay would begin to fall towards the Shady Pines planet below, but it would survive. Emergency force fields would deploy until the cargo bay crashed into the planet. Bognrd would survive, though a few bruises, perhaps a broken bone or two, maybe, at most, terminal internal haemorrhaging, may plague him after the crash.

Demi was not so lucky. With Bognrd gone, that meant that War Garbler Tonbush was no longer distracted. Soon, he would notice a flashing display, or a discrete alarm, or something, that would inform the violently pre-disposed man of Demi's presence, and she she still couldn't persuade herself to poke the Meep's eyes and effect her escape.

Heavy boots stomped against the smooth, aesthetically pleasing flooring as War Garbler Tonbush had, apparently, decided to make his way to the exact spot where Demi couldn't even try to hide. If she could press herself even more against the airlock door, she would, but it already felt terribly uncomfortable. She began to shiver uncontrollably. The stomps were getting closer and, if at all possible, more ominous.

When she saw the bejewelled war garments of Tonbush's armour, the pointed toes of the boots bearing exceedingly large pearls, Demi felt all moisture leave her mouth. That is, until the War Garbler touched his horned war helmet and it folded and flipped and oozed out of sight, revealing something Demi had not expected at all scowling at her.

"Who the devil are you?" The War Garbler, his voice no longer modified by the helmet, look perplexed.

"Good work, Demi! We've got Bognrd." Friss' voice came from the Meep in Demi's pouch. "Transport in three, two, one ..."

Now she understood exactly how toothpaste would feel if someone tried to stuff it back into the tube as Friss transported her back to Lodka. She didn't like it.