36

Rows and columns upon rows and columns stretched out into the far distance. A room far bigger and longer than could possibly have fit within the confines of the bank building that sat within the centre of this enormous black hole. It wasn't possible. An impossible thing within an impossible thing and she could only assume that it was some kind of DWAIt technology that no-one else in the galaxy had ever heard of.

"Oh! I see! A dimensional pocket! Nice!" With the numerous weapons wrapped around his body, Friss tried to put his hands into his pockets, to look casual, but couldn't reach them. He settled for resting his hands upon the barrel of the rifle on top of the others. "I've seen a few of these. I don't know how DWAIt Corps does it, but it works."

"Indeed, sir. Allow me to call up the deposit box in question." The Apistakker banker moved to the side, where a console sat, and tapped upon the screen. "It should only take a few moments."

As soon as the Apistakker finished tapping, a furious whirring sound came from above and a drone flew down. Not an Apistakker drone, but a technological drone. It hovered in front of the console and a camera eye focussed in upon the screen before it hovered back up a few feet. The drone clicked, whirred and sounded as though it tutted, turning in the air as though getting its bearings.

With a mechanical sound that resembled an 'aha', it looked in one, specific, direction and then a wormhole appeared before it. Not a space ship sized wormhole, but a drone sized one, which the drone flew into and disappeared. Wherever it had gone, it seemed the safe deposit box area required the use of wormholes to speed up deliveries.

"And me?" Demi felt a yawning sensation in her gut as she tried to make sense of the sheer vastness of the space she found herself in. It didn't feel altogether real. "You said there was a thing that could clear my name here. I'd like to have that, please."

"Oh. Yeah. The thing. Yeah. Sure." Friss had blinked far too often in the space of those few words, as though he couldn't quite remember what Demi talked about. He waved a finger at the console and raised his eyebrows at the Apistakker. "May I?"

"Of course, sir. Please, be my guest. Take anything and everything you want." Several of the banker's appendages rose into the air. If it could roll its compound eyes, Demi expected it would have. "It's not as though anything you take will be gone from the vault for long. It will either be returned, forthwith, or it will be atomised along with you, your crew, your ship and anything else within the general vicinity. Protocol, you see."

"I see." Friss frowned at the console, not seeing what the banker meant at all, then his eyes widened as he saw something upon the screen. "There we go."

Another drone fell down from above, but Demi couldn't see where it came from. It buzzed and whirred, flying to the console, focussed its camera and made a squawking sound. The camera turned to Friss, then back to the console. It turned to Friss again. Then back to the console. Demi thought it was going to repeat the action again but, with a sound that resembled a resigned sigh, it hovered upward, opened a wormhole, and flew through it.

Now two wormholes hung on the air above them and Friss started to remove some of the weaponry from around his shoulders. He laid aside the pump-action water rifle, the irritant gas weapon, the gun shaped like a doll, the plunger and egg whisk, eventually leaving only the Killtromatic Five-Alpha dangling from his shoulder.

That allowed him to put his hands in his pockets and he looked both relieved and satisfied to do so. He tried to stand in a casual manner as he waited, but couldn't look casual if he tried. He changed tack, returning to one of his usual poses, hands on hips as he gazed toward the wormholes, eyes squinting. That didn't seem to work for him either. He began to pace, whistling, before looking through the inventory on the console. Demi stood and waited patiently.

"Will this take long? Only, I think our ship might be rejecting the technology that allows us to stay in the black hole." She addressed the Apistakker banker, who turned their compound eyes toward her as though seeing her for the first time. "I don't know what would happen if she did reject it."

"Oh no. That would be a shame. I shall do my utmost to expedite the process." The banker looked very deliberately at Demi before turning away, placing several appendages behind its back and clearly not expediting anything. "Madam does not seem to understand the gravity of the situation. We are not in the business of saving your ship or your lives."

"I do understand the gravity of the situation just fine, thank you very much!" Demi moved to stand in front of the banker, standing on her tip-toes to look it in the eyes as she pushed her glasses up her nose. "Gravity is exactly our problem, including you. What do you think will happen when a huge, organic ship, with a questionable power source, becomes unstable while attached to this bank? Will the spaghettification process simply pass you by, or will you be affected too?"

If the Apistakker banker could blink, it would have. The being had completely different methods of silent communicating from humans, but Demi got the distinct feeling that she had just terrified the banker. A strange smell had started to emanate from them and its antennae quivered. After a few seconds, the banker sidled toward the console as though they meant to do that all along and tapped the screen.

"Your packages will arrive momentarily." The banker sidled away from the console as though they hadn't just expedited the process contrary to what they had said only seconds before, returning back to stand with appendages behind their thorax. "You won't get away with it."

"Sure we will. So, worked here long?" Friss held up a finger as the sound of Lap, screaming, came through his and Demi's organic communications thing in their ears. It sounded like someone mercilessly chainsawing a Gutenberg bible. "Lap. Lap. Lap! Calm down! What's happening?"

"Hey, Frissa, it's Bri? Lapo's in a bit of a tizz because something's happening?" Briyun's questioning voice replaced Lap's incoherent, to Demi, sounds. "Seems like there's a bit of a buzz going on out here? All sorts of things are flying around? It's just a hive of panic right now?"

"Are you making racist jokes at a time like this?" It was hardly the time to pull Briyun up on it, either, but they were still waiting for their deposit boxes. "It's not okay, Briyun! Not okay!"

"Says you? I heard that stoat crack, Demo, don't underestimate my ears?" She had a point, Demi supposed, but she pouted anyway. "But, you're right? Anyway, inappropriate jokes aside, it seems we have company waiting for us outside the black hole's gravity well? A lot of company?"

"How much is a lot?" Friss frowned. He looked at the wormholes that still hadn't spat the drones back out. He looked at the banker and frowned even harder. Then he rubbed his forehead. He couldn't frown any more. "Never mind. Hey, banker guy, can you make that expedited retrieval a little more expedity? Like, now would be good."

The Apistakker grumbled as he moved back to the console and Demi had to wonder what, exactly, awaited them outside of the black hole. Already, both War Garbler Tonbush had found them and Brenda, the AI moon. She couldn't help but wonder whether they had found them again but, more importantly, she also wondered how they had found them in the first place. They knew, for a fact, that neither Demi or Bognrd had any trackers on them. She assumed that neither Friss nor Lap had trackers, either. Which left only one person they hadn't checked.

"Briyun. I want you to do something for me, okay?" She didn't wait for an answer. "I need you to go to Zapasnoy's medical bay and have a full body scan. I think you might be bugged. No, don't ask why. Don't question it at all because, if I know Friss and Lap, any refusal will lead to them killing you. Trust me on that."

"Right-o?" To say Demi had just about threatened her, Briyun seemed cheerful enough. But, then again, she seemed cheerful at practically everything. Including slaughtering thirty-foot tall rabbits.

"BOGNRD TO THAT THING I LAUGHINGLY DEFER TO AND CALL 'CAPTAIN'!" This, Demi knew, was going to be an extra complication. A complication they did not need. "SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH YOUR SEXUALLY SUGGESTIVE SHIP! IT APPEARS TO BE BOILING, WHICH IS PLAYING HAVOC WITH MY COOKING TIMES! THIS WILL NOT STAND! THIS IS AN OUTRAGE! THIS ... GIVE ME A SECOND, MY PARSNIPS ARE READY!"

The communications from Bognrd simply cut off, but that didn't bother Demi. What bothered her was that it sounded as though Lodka was on the verge of rejecting the new technology completely, or could, at a push, die. A ship dying. That thought felt very different than if, say, Zapasnoy became destroyed. Zapasnoy was only a machine. Lodka was a living thing. She had personality. She had character. She was the only way out of this black hole.

At the moment Demi had decided to stuff waiting for anything anymore, ready to steal Lodka and Flesh-Route her way to the furthest reaches of the galaxy, both drones reappeared, both making self-important 'pings' as they dropped a long, thin box into both Demi's and Friss' hands, before flying away, up to wherever they had come from. They both made sounds that resembled wheezing.

"Hey! Nice! Anyway, banker guy, you've been great." Friss shook one of the banker's appendages, turned and then stopped. "I was going to kill you, but you've been a great audience. Adios!"

"Be still my beating heart, sir." The Apistakker banker gave Demi a small bow. "I'd like to say it's been a pleasure, but it hasn't. I would consider suicide a preferable option were I ever to see either of you again. The items, however, will gladly return to my vault, very soon."

Demi waved at the banker as they ran back into the counter room. She liked them and their dry wit and didn't feel at all scared of bees anymore. That was a lie, of course, she would always be afraid of bees, even though she found them cute. Wasps, however, were simply pure evil and if she ever saw a wasp-like being, she may actually earn her newfound reputation as a mass-murderer. A reputation that would soon disappear, deleted by the technology within the box she carried.