StarDestroyer.Net BBS

This thing me and a friend IRL cooked up. We're just starting, so we need all the help we can get

Amongst other things, the title needs work too :p



PROLOGUE…

It is five years after the Great Hyperspace War, and yet the Metagrammatron Imperiat, led by its self-styled Matriarch, has only descended further into its regime of oppression and subjugation. Apathetic, the nations of humanity stand by and watch, unmoved at the plight of the Imperiat’s people. The only thing standing against the Matriarch’s undisputed rule is the Talambanian Liberation Front, led by the enigmatic Thomas Cervantes, the last best hope for the Imperat’s despondent people.

This story will be about the TLF’s noble struggle for freedom against the Matriarch’s reign of terror, but our tale will begin at the nation of Bethania, a theocratic world-state that is home to John Baylor.


Meet John Baylor. He does not look like much, with his protruding gut, inability to shave regularly, and his penchant for brightly coloured shirts, but he is a veteran of the War. Not only that, but he volunteered for the 13th Bethanian Martyr’s Corps, a unit exclusive to lunatics and psychopaths. This, and the fact that he was discharged from the Corps due to an incident involving his CO, his CO’s wife, and a claymore disguised as a brick, makes him a very unsafe person to be with.

Unwilling to return to the boring life of a civilian, he has started up a small business of selling illegal firearms. It is profitable, but it is also something most enterprising entrepreneurs would shun (which, to John, is the point), and today, we will see the end of John’s short career as a gun-runner. And the beginning of his biggest adventure.


Morning.

Chirping birds and dewdropped leaves. Rising sun. A pleasant morning for everyone, a beautiful start to a beautiful day. Alarm clock. John undulates from his bed and hauls himself to the bathroom, still half-comatose. All around the hemisphere, millions of Bethanians pray their morning prayers, thanking their god for a new day while John performs his own rites in front of the urinal.

He bathes, brushes his teeth, forgets to shave and puts on his oversized briefs. Then he wears his cargo pants, worn-out undershirt, and a brightly coloured Hawaiian polo. He gels his hair, slicking it back before putting on a golden Rolex and a pair of shades. A mangy bunch of Connoltians – great enemies during the War but now petty and plagued by infighting - would soon be at the starport, waiting for him to deliver several kilograms of very illegal anti-matter. He wears his socks, puts on his sneakers, and makes his way out the living room and towards the door. He grabs his keys.

It was a going to be a good day. soon, he’d be as rich as that obese spice dealer who had his face transplanted with a golden brick.

Then the door explodes.

As the dust subsides, and as the ringing in his ears disappear, John finds himself confronted by three Constables – all armed with autoshotguns aimed at his head, and all of their boots dirtying the immaculate pink ‘welcome home’ mat at his doorstep.

Over the deafening whine of police sirens, the lead Constable shouts (rather unnecessary, due to his voice-enhancing vocabulator): “Freeze! You are under arrest! You’re coming with us!”

As John regained his composure and wiped the dumbstruck look off of his face, he only said one word: “Wrong.”

Then, with a press of a button, the doorway explodes (again) and the Constables are instantaneously engulfed in plasma. The front half of the house disappears under the micro-nuclear reaction, leaving only immolated wreckage and furniture, and no signs of the law-enforcing threesome. Vaporized.

As the day’s second explosion subsides, John looks out of his demolished home and grins lazily at the sight of a half-liquefied police cruiser parked haphazardly on his lawn. “I knew I put that claymore there for a reason...” he says. He is content, half-deaf, and not yet fully aware of the ramifications of his actions (though pretty soon, he will be). He turns back, maybe to get a new un-blown up shirt, when a voice calls out to him.

He did not see the police van parked on the other side of the road, far behind the cruiser, and neither did he see the half-dozen heavily armed officers who were pointing their assault rifles at him. As he turns around, he is nearly blinded by all the laser dot-sights pointed at his face.

“What?! A person has the right to defend his household!” John protests, oblivious of the three Constables he just vaporized (later on, he would also protest ‘What Constables?!’ before being denied an attorney and a trial).

Then, after a warning shot fired at an un-immolated piece of furniture beside him, one of the officers answered back: “And you also have the right to remain silent!”


Thus is the end of John’s short-lived career as gun-runner. And now, his greatest adventure begins…

Rude Awakening



Not mentioned on most galactic travel brochures is the fact that from one end of the known universe to another is an obscure travel route that, every other year, the prison ship Charon IV takes. Along the way, it makes routine stops at routine ‘customer’ planets, picking up new ‘passengers’.

Whereas on standard luxury cruise liners, you’d have passengers segregated into the likes of ‘first-class’, ‘fiesta-class’ and ‘economy-class’, in the Charon you have things ranging from ‘pseudo-necrophiliac techno-rapists’ and ‘paleo-felons’ to even the likes of ‘over-evangelical door-to-door missionaries’.

And instead of a tropical paradise world filled with nubile young girls of barely-legal age and with the tendency to eagerly remove all articles of clothing for a few wads of space-money, the destination of our luxury cruise liner happens to be none other than Perdition, a death world whose gory details shall be discussed in the later paragraphs.

Oh, and it happens to be in the Metagrammatron Imperiat too.


One of the Charon’s customer worlds is Bethania, and one of the prison ship’s latest passengers is John Baylor, still very unconscious after his compulsory post-mock-trial beating, and still wearing his tattered Hawaiian polo shirt.

He has been placed in the ass end of the ship, near the atomic immolation furnace, and in Charon’s equivalent of ‘economy class’. It is called the ‘sub-human filth we didn’t bother to sort out’ section. Despite his miserable condition, John is lucky to share his five feet by five feet cell with only two other persons, as opposed to the usual twenty.



Wake up, you sorry sack of shit. Wake up and smell the ashes…

Do not worry my child, you are in safe company…


Once again half-comatose, John opens his eyes to find two figures doting over him (actually, they weren’t – the cell was just too small). “Wha-? Uhh…”

“See? I told you,” One of the voices said to the other. It was the one that called him a ‘sorry sack of shit’. It continued: “The crew won’t throw corpses in the cells since there’s no incentive to bring them to our lovely destination. So, even if he looks dead and smells dead, rest assured Father, our pal here’s as alive as a drunk on New Year.”

“Thanks be to God. How are you feeling my child?” this was the one the other called ‘father’. The guys dad?

“Obviously he’s hurt from the beating they gave him before they dumped him here,” the profane voice muttered. “The way he looks, no wonder they dumped his sorry ass into this exclusive-to-subhumans shithole…”

If he weren’t so comatose, John might have resented that. But for now a feeble “My head hurts...” was all he could muster with his cognitive faculties.

“They threw you in half-dead, you’re lucky to be alive,” the profane voice said reassuringly. As John opened his eyes, he saw that the voice belonged to a dreadlocked young man with a scarred face. Despite still being half-comatose, John immediately noticed that he was wearing fatigues – the same type used in the War. “Though…after I tell you where we’re headed, you might wish you were dead…”

Once again, John’s brain did not register. “Wha-?”

And then he remembered. After he blew up his own home, the surviving Constables filled him up with non-lethal beanbag rounds. Then, after clubbing him repeatedly on the head, they dragged him into what looked like a decrepit pub on top of a septic tank and held their ‘trial’ there (inside the septic tank). Then, once more, they brutalized him with their clubs before sentencing him to exile. And then they beat him up…again. And then they left him in the septic tank for a couple of days before bringing him to the starport, where the prison ship he is currently in was docked.

Now, his brain registered the situation. And it was not good. “Ah...”

“Yes, they are taking us to hell itself,” the other said. He was a big man, pale and in brown missionary robes. Not the type you’d usually find in a prison ship after having a whimsical sleepover in a septic tank…

“Perdition”, the young man in uniform said. “A desolate moon ran by a giant half-wit mutant, or so I’ve heard. Trash from all over the galaxy are sent there. It’s basically a giant shithole… everyone from paleo-rapists, murderers, political prisoners and mutants are thrown in.” He paused, as if there was some distaste in his mouth. “I’ve heard stories of people going insane at the mere sight of Perdition’s surface. There are stories of mutant techno-gladiators and necrophiliac spice fiends ‘harvesting’ the dead. It’s the living embodiment of hell, to say the least. And that’s without mentioning the techno-rape-fields,” he continued. “Oh, and you can call me Serv.”

John shrugged and waved hi at him. “Hi.”

“And my name is Father Sergius Augusta, from the Ordo Emaculada,” declared the large man in missionary robes.

“My name’s John,” John said, slowly and methodically checking himself for any broken bones. There was some blood and dried up shit (possibly his own), but no broken bones. And that was good. “So…”

“You won’t be getting much rest here; the crew don’t feed us anything and don’t even think of the possibility of a toilet, because they don’t provide them here in this part of the floating cage we’re on,” Serv said.

“Meh…” John replied. In the Martyr’s Corps, he learned that real men peed in their pants.

There was a moment of silence, and then Serge the missionary asked: “So, what is your committed sin, my child?”

How quaint. Maybe he could make their cell a confession booth, John thought. “Oh, nothing. Just selling some illegal anti-matter and killing three Constables,” he replied, usually chatty after receiving multiple beatings and concussions. Besides, these two were friendly enough. “Oh wait… what Constables? Anyway, how ‘bout you?”

Serge slumped, as if reminded of some great burden that has been placed on his large shoulders. “It is a grave crime indeed, for happenstances have conspired to put me in this deplorable situation. I do not pretend to know the Lord’s plan, but if it-”

“Just save him the sad story, Father. Another time, maybe…” Serv interrupted. He turned to John. “Let’s just say he got arrested for missionary business…”

“Indeed…” Serge’s voice was full of sorrow and defeat. He slouched on one of their tiny cell’s corners.

“Okay…so,” John motioned to Serv. “What’s your story?”

“I’m a spy, working for the revolution,” Serv stated briefly, shrugging. “Bad business, I got set up. That’s why I’m here.”

“Revolution? Which one?” John asked. “The MetaPostNihilistic PseudoJihad? Or the TechnoFemiNazi Movement? Or the PaleoProtoReligionists for the Ethical Treatment of Androgynes?”

“Nope. The Talambanian Liberation Front.”

“What?”

“The Talambanian Liberation Front,” Serv repeated. Once again, he shrugged. He seemed pretty calm for a guy sentenced to what was previously described as a de facto death sentence, and that reassured John. What techno-rape-fields? “We’re based in the Metagrammatron Imperiat-”

“Ah…that isolationist shithole ran by that Matriarch person?” John asked. He once read in a comic book that the Matriarch was this ten-ton slug woman with…yeah. Things.

“Yup, that one. Our base is at Talambania. Pretty nice place, considering it’s a feudalistic shithole ran by slave traders and spice barons.” For the nth time, Serv shrugged.

”You get much sun there?” John asked nonchalantly.

“Yeah, sometimes the sun explodes and lots of people die, but it’s okay. Keeps the population down.”

“Nice,” John replied enthusiastically. Then a half-formed thought formed inside his head. “Are we still orbiting Bethania? If we could break out, some of my friends could-”

“Sadly, no,” Serv said. “I was hauled in from the Phillipian asteroid colony two days ago, and when I was placed in this cage, you were already here, unconscious and talking about Constables in your sleep.” What Constables? John thought. Serv continued: “Just a while ago, Father Augusta was also placed here – and he told me he was from the world Nort’Gen, which is, believe it or not, in the Imperiat.”

“Shit,” John hissed, uttering his first profanity of the day.

“The Phillipian system is between the Imperiat and the rest of civilized space, which includes Bethania, so I suspect they took the Tannhauser Gate to cross the Damocles Gulf…” Serv said, although John had no idea what he was talking about. “Hmm…I think we’ll be at Perdition soon.”

That was not good. “So, how the hell do we get out of here?” John blurted out. “Any plans?”

“Oh yeah…” Serv said, scratching his head and sounding like as if he never thought of it before. “Right, I get you. I’ve been working on it for a while…”

“Okay...so, the plan...”

“Yes, the plan!” Serv declared, spreading his arms wide and in the process hitting both John and Serge the lamenting missionary. “The plan…”

“Yeah,” John re-replied. “The plan…”

“The plan…” Serv repeated, suddenly deep in thought. “Umm…take a look around…”

John never actually did, until Serv mentioned it. And so he did. Gazing around, his mouth fell wide agape at the sight of it all. Around their meagre enclosure was an infinite amount of prison cells. They were identical, but unlike their own luxurious and comfortable suite, the others were all filled to the brim with men, women and children - either that or midgets, John wasn’t sure.

On the bottommost levels were dead folk, crushed and dehydrated, covered in their own filth and the filth of those above them. They were shrivelled up, and on top of them were less-dead folk. Dying people and people wanting to die, and both. They were groaning and moaning and lamenting, sticking their hands out of their bars, seemingly grasping for air to breathe.

The entire hell they were in was lit in a dim reddish tinge, and there was smoke creeping into the place too. It smelled of burning…something. John didn’t want to think about it… Once again, his mind did not fully comprehend what was around him. And so, he said the only thing he could: “Woah…”

“I know. Anyway, they go around and find cells full of dead people, and they grab them with these giant shovels, like those used on chimneys, and then shove them into the nuclear furnaces for fuel.” Serv continued, inadvertently explaining what John was smelling.

“But… that’s not really necessary, is it?” John asked. To him, it sounded really… well, he couldn’t find a word to describe it. It was stupid, in a really sick and mind-numbingly depressing way, though a bit funny too. Serge was still at his corner, probably praying for the thousands (if not millions) of dead and dying people all around them. Pretty soon, they would all be dead…

“I know, I suspect the crew’s just bored…” Serv explained. Wasn’t much of an explanation, though. “Anyway, they’re ‘harvesting’ nearer and nearer, and pretty soon, they’ll get to us. So, I say we pretend to be dead and when they come, we jump them.”

“Hey, that does sound like a pretty good idea,” John said. “They won’t suspect a thing, just like bricking a sleeping person in the nuts!”

“Yeah!”

And then, Serge finally spoke: “Yes, indeed. It would be like ambushing their god-given parts with sanctified hollow blocks.”



Two days later…

Their cell was five feet long and five feet wide, and so, in order to pretend to be dead people, they had to lie uncomfortably on top of each other in half-curled up positions. Needless to say, it was not very comfortable. In fact, it was the exact opposite of comfortable, and it accented John’s bad back. The fact that his face was on Serge the missionary’s priestly crotch didn’t help at all.

“So, Serv,” John said, feeling slightly pissed at the fact that Serv’s cunning plan turned out to be rather stupidly un-cunning. “Um…are they harvesting closer?”

Serv was on top of their pile, since, as he explained, he was the skinniest and since the entire thing was his idea. And so, while they pretended to be a corpse-pile, he watched the harvesters come closer and closer. “Yeah…any minute now.”

“That’s what you said days ago!” John protested.

As if in response, Serv’s stomach grumbled. “I’m hungry,” he declared, as he noticed something moving right outside the cell. John saw it too, just barely. “Aha!” he shouted triumphantly as he snatched it with a lightning fast motion, and then smashed it against the cell’s bars.

“What the hell is that?” John asked, his voice panicked. There was a sick crunching sound, and then a wet smacking sound, and then a pool of blood formed on his Hawaiian shirt. “Serv, what the hell is that?!”

“Here,” Serv said, handing him a headless rat. “Want some?”



Four days later…

In the vastness of space, the Charon IV emerges out of the superluminal confines of hyperspace and enters real-space…

“Last stop before Perdition, Talambania.” A cheery female voice reported in PAs all over the ship. In the ‘sub-human filth we didn’t bother to sort out’ ass-section, thousands of sardined corpse-people groaned in anguish, impatient and wanting to just die already.


“So…” John said. He shifted his position half a week ago, despite the protests of his cellmates, and now the back of his head was resting on Serge the missionary’s crotch. “Tell me about Talambania and your revolution.”

Serv, who was still on top of them, sighed. He looked up to the cell’s ceiling. “Where to start…”

“How about from the beginning?” John suggested.

“Okay,” Serv paused for a moment. “Talambania is a waste world, shitty backwater even by Metagrammatron standards. Its capital is the city of Villamoore, and its ‘leader’ is the High Count Benn S’tto – a good man, but incompetent and oblivious. Outside Villamoore, all of the power belongs to the spice barons, wealthy assholes who sell their diluted shit to the populace. And there are the slave traders too. It’s not pretty.”

Serv shook his head, which was resting on John’s knee. Then he continued: “During the War, as well as the previous Connoltian Crusades, Viceroy Ferrer Bouviere, with help from the barons and the slavers, took over half the population of Talambania and sent them to the front lines. None of them got back home. All the survivors were sent to Perdition.

Naturally, this atrocity was rewarded by the Matriarch – and so, the barons and slavers were given free reign over Talambania and some other worlds. For their unquestioning loyalty, they were made generals of the Imperiat’s military. Things really went really downhill after that. Aside from the Matriarch and her TechnoPriests, all the power in the Imperiat lies with the barons and slavers.”

“Why doesn’t the Matriarch do anything?” John asked, although the answer seemed obvious to him.

“Because she doesn’t give a shit,” Serv replied, his voice a mix of despondency and anger. “She’s too busy with her TechnoPriests and too busy fucking with the ArchDeacon Lestat or shit. She doesn’t care what the barons and slavers do, as long as they make sure the Imperiat is isolated from the rest of the galaxy. God knows what the Matriarch is doing, or what she wants.”

“And everything is peachy for the barons?”

Serv replied: “Yeah…they love the current situation, just as much as they love the Matriarch. They can do whatever they want, and no one can or will do anything about it.”

“And that’s where you guys came in?” John asked.

“Yes. That’s why Marshall Oliver Paul Briones started the revolution on Talambania-”

“Shhh!” it came from the bottom of the cell, from Serge the missionary. Because of his position, the side of his head (including his ear) was pressed against the floor. “I hear footsteps. Someone is coming!”


A trio of crewmen approach a relatively unfilled cell and open it, and as they grab their shovels to remove the three corpses, they are ambushed by said corpses. Literally like bricking someone’s nuts while they’re asleep. Without the bricks. Thus complicating things and forcing John to stick one crewman’s head between the cell bars, and then break his neck with multiple hits from a shovel. Serge knocked his victim unconscious by banging his head against the cell’s bars. While Serv, on the other hand, simply kicked his crewman’s nuts and then crushed his windpipe with a well-placed palm thrust – the man was now rolling on the floor, suffocating while his hands clutched his groin.

While Serge the humanitarian missionary was looking away, John mashed the unconscious crewman’s head with his shovel, staining it with brains and bone. Serge looked back and shrugged. Some kind of holy man…

“Great, we’re out. Where next?” John said, eager from escaping the cell. Finally out of its cramped confines, he began stretching his limbs leisurely, stopping midway as he noticed something…

Oddly enough, the amount of noise in the chamber was increasing – from ambient moaning of dying people to a more noticeable and unnerving noise. It was as if the prisoners were expiring at a more hurried pace. The eerie red glow of the area also seemed to be fluctuating – pulsating like a beating heart. John shivered. “We have to get out of here…now.”

“Yeah,” Serv replied. “This place is fucked up…”

Suddenly, there was an unearthly scream, bloodcurdling and…inhuman. Then, everything went dark. The moaning stopped. In their place were…whispers…

“Fuck.”

Ten seconds later, the lights went back. They were darker now, less reddish and more like dark blood. For the first time in days, John noticed the cells around them – the limbs that stuck out from the bars, seemingly reaching for them, and the grotesque faces that tried to escape their confines.

As John staggered back in shock, Serge began walking away from them. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“I must leave for I have a very urgent matter to attend to,” Serge replied, turning back. His face was very grave. “And hell is precisely where I am going.”

Escape




The lights went off again, and by the time they came back, Serge was gone, disappearing amidst the thousands of cages. As for John and Serv, the entire death-chamber was once more lit in blood-light that, to John, seemed to pulsate eerily like a human heart. He felt like he could hear it…

All around them, the sardined prisoners were moaning frantically, violently grabbing for them as if lusting for human flesh. Some even tried to stick their heads through the bars, with very unsightly results – their compressed skulls were grotesquely wailing in pain as their eyes popped out of their sockets, their arms were madly flailing through the bars. John felt like crawling back into his cell. “Shit, how the fuck are we going to get out of here?!”

“Relax,” Serv replied coolly as he checked the three corpses they just killed. He grabbed a pistol from one of them and handed John a shovel. “Here, take this.”

”Thanks,” he got it and noticed that it was covered with blood. It was the one he used to kill two of the ‘harvesters’. It gave him some measure of comfort, but the thousands of moaning cage-people got rid of it quickly.

Serv shrugged. “Anyway, it so happens that we’re orbiting Talambania-”

“So?” John waved his shovel in exclamation, accidentally smashing the skull of a prisoner who stuck his head through the bars. “Whoops, sorry.”

“So, all we need to do is get a lifepod and get out of this boat,” Serv answered. He made it sound very simple, even though it wasn’t.

“And how are we going to get to this lifepod? We don’t even know where to go!” John protested. One of the moaning prisoners from a nearby cell tried to grab him, and he responded by whacking its arm with his shovel. The arm snapped like a twig, but with bones sticking out instead of splinters. The prisoner wailed and spastically began waving his half-dismembered arm, causing blood to fly all over. Fuck you, John thought.

“Well, now we do,” Serv said as he rummaged through the last corpse and pulled out a datasheet – a bloodstained piece of digital techno-paper. “Anyway,” he said, pointing to the sheet. “We’re here, at the ass-end of the ship, so all we need to do is go here.”

“Where?!” another hand groped John, and once more, he broke it off with his shovel. “Fuck off!”

Serv sighed. “Just follow me.”

“Wait.”

“What?” Serv turned back to face John – who looked rather perturbed. “Another prisoner grope you?”

“Did you hear that?” John asked.

“What?”

“Nothing…nevermind,” John muttered. It was probably just the prisoners…whispering to him. Serv started walking, and he followed. He had his shovel at the ready…



The doors opened with an electronic whir, and as the lights came on, John and Serv were confronted with a disgusting sight. The steel corridor that led out of the “sub-human filth we didn’t bother to sort out” ass-section was smeared in blood, with bits of human flesh littering the floor. It smelled like weeks-old roadkill.

John screamed as he nearly slid on a chewed-up piece of ear. “This is not the right way, Serv! This is not the right way!”

“Calm down, it’s nothing.” Serv replied coolly.

“Fuck you! There’s an ear stuck on my boot!” John screamed back. He almost slid again, so he held on the wall for support, but then he noticed that it was stained with thick, slime-like bile. He screamed. “Shit!”

“That ear was probably there for a long time, anyway,” Serv walked forward, unperturbed by the blood-stained walls or the ceiling that so happened to be redecorated with human entrails. Every once in a while, a chunk of gut would fall down from the ceiling. “So, shut up and put your shit together.”

John’s mouth fell open. He struggled for words, but the only ones that came out of his mouth were ‘ear’ and ‘boot’. As Serv went around a corner, John yelped. “Wait! Don’t leave me!”

He ran after him, ear still on boot.



Around the corner, they opened another door and entered what seemed to be a storage closet. Full of dismembered limbs. The floor was slippery with blood, so they entered with caution and began inspecting the room for anything useful. A female torso, naked and bloodied, fell from the ceiling and landed right in front of Serv. He flinched, but nothing more. He kicked it on its back and noticed that it was full of bite marks. “Wonder what went on here…”

John was rummaging through a box that was, miraculously, not packed full of human organs. He finished with it and reported: “No supplies, aside from this mop and these flashlights.” He pocketed one of them. “So, where next?” he asked nervously.

“The boiler room.”



Serv entered the room first with pistol and flashlight at the ready. Whatever was going on, it was obvious that the crew wasn’t being mutilated through natural causes. And they obviously weren’t hanging their guts on the ceiling by themselves. As usual, John followed Serv in hesitantly, looking both ways before entering.

The boiler room was, naturally, filled with steam – which made the place very hot and sweaty. John was unbuttoning his shirt when he noticed a legless corpse with its head stuck into a pipe. The hot gas spewing out of the pipe was peeling off the corpse’s flesh.

John was in the process of uttering a curse when he suddenly realized that right beside him was another body. This one was impaled by a pipe that, for some reason, was spewing out bloody mist from the guy’s chest. John staggered backwards and dropped his shovel.

“Come on! Let off some steam, John,” Serv joked.

“Not funny,” John replied. He picked up his shovel but then dropped it again.

“What?”

John pointed.

“What-” Serv turned around and saw a figure huddled in the room’s corner. He was naked, soaked in blood, and his skin was totally covered in second-degree burns, with charred flesh dotting his blood-soaked complexion. He was curled up, rocking himself on his presumably also-burned ass, and muttering in some incomprehensible language. The floor around him was covered in a puddle of blood and urine. As John and Serv neared him, they smelled a mixture of piss and burnt flesh. For the first time, Serv was out of words. “Holy shit…”

“Yeah…” John muttered. “Holy shit…”

Serv knelt down in front of the guy. “You okay? Can you stand?”

The man stopped mumbling and looked Serv in the eyes, although he himself had blood-filled holes instead of eyes. There were tears flowing from the man’s eyeless sockets. He opened his mouth as if to talk, but then Serv saw that he also lacked a tongue. Then he curled himself up and once more resumed mumbling.

Serv stared at him, his eyes full of compassion, and then he looked to John, who nodded at him. He took out his pistol and fired one shot.



As they left the boiler room, John replaced his shovel with a crowbar – lighter, yet still capable of delivering a healthy amount of blunt-force trauma. Not that he didn’t get enough of trauma from the boiler room. Serv was now jogging through the corridor, no longer minding the blood-stained floor. John struggled to keep up.

“Hurry up,” Serv said as he rounded a corner.

“Yeah,” John replied. He was panting now, and sweating too. Though now far away from the “sub-human filth we didn’t bother to sort out” ass-section, he swore he could still hear the moaning. “Um, Serv, where’s Serge? And are we going to meet up with him?”

“I don’t know,” Serv answered, not bothering to look back. “But if he’s smart, he’ll rendezvous with us at the life boat.”

“That’s if he knows where it is.” John shrugged. Either way, he was okay with it. As long as I get out of this hell hole. I swear, this is getting worse every second, he thought.

They both stopped when they reached the intersection, when the corridor forked into three separate paths. Each path led to a door.

“What is that?” John asked.

“What does it look like? It’s an intersection,” Serv replied. This time, his voice was not-so calm. “Escape pod is this way.”

He moved to the right door and opened it. Behind the door was yet another blood-stained corridor, but this time, there were fresh corpses littering the floor. From far ahead, John could hear screaming. This time, he was sure it wasn’t just in his head. “Not good, is it?”

“No!” Serv yelled back. Definitely not calm. He opened the middle door, and it was not good either. The ceiling, this time no-longer decorated with human entrails, was caved in. Wires were hanging from the parts that weren’t caved in, and they exploded in sparks whenever they touched the floor. “Fuck!”

The third door, they didn’t even bother opening. From the glass slit window, they could see that beyond it was a blazing inferno. It was burning, and the door itself was cooking. There were screams, angry snarls, and then thumping sounds from the other side. Something was trying to get in, or get out.

“So, where next?” John asked.

“Back to the boiler room.”

“No way!” John cried. “No-fucking-way!”

“There was a maintenance door there, and the datasheet says it leads to service vents.”

“Well, fuck that! There’s gotta be-”

“No there isn’t. Now follow me,” Serv snapped, cutting the very-alarmed and very-worried John off. “Or, if not, you can always try door number one.” He pointed to the door that led to the fresh-corpses and the screaming. “Come on.”




Meanwhile…

As Father Sergius Augusta made his way through the hellish corridors of the Charon IV, he remembered the reason why he was now in this most despicable of situations. He was of the Ordo Emaculada no longer…stripped of his priesthood, exiled, denied of any possibility of redemption, declared unfit to wear the robes of the Order and exiled for helping an innocent soul. He was betrayed by his peers and condemned by his superiors, damned to the Imperiat and ultimately this demonic space-hulk. But he was not angry at them, he forgave them a long time ago. The only one he was angry at was himself, and the only one he did not forgive was himself.

He had a duty, one sent to him by the Almighty itself. A responsibility given to him by the Maker. And he was bound, on his soul, to complete that duty. Or die trying.

But dying was the least of his worries…

He ran through the steel hallways as fast as he could, paying no heed to the abominations around him. The bodies crucified, the children set on fire, entire sections of the ship flooded with blood.

This was all his fault…



One of the doors ahead of him opened, and out came a woman. She was naked and Serge could see that chunks of her flesh were bitten off. She fell to the floor, and from the door came two other women – shrivelled and withered to the bone. They hissed, and then tore her limb from limb. She didn’t even have time to scream as she was dismembered.

Sergius uttered a prayer, and then made his way past the feasting women. As he entered another room, he was met by a harrowing sight. The cell blocks were opened, and all over the place were corpses – both of the crew and the prisoners. It was as if they died trying to kill each other, with knives and crowbars still in their hands.

The corpses formed a trail of death leading to the room’s end, where there was a gigantic door of steel. It was covered in scratches, bloodied handprints and splattered brains. It was dented, as if something was trying to smash its way outside…

Sergius uttered a prayer and then looked up to the glowing sign above the door.

It was the ship’s bridge.

As he walked towards the door, the lights again went out and, once more, pulsating blood-light filled the room. Then there was an unearthly scream that echoed throughout the ship. It was neither a man’s or a woman’s, it belonged to a child. And it came from behind the door.

“Fear not my child!” Father Sergius cried out out, his resolve undaunted by the hell around him…and the hell that was behind the door. “I’m coming…”

Planetfall





The escape bay was immaculate, a serene sight especially considering the rest of the ship. Corridors literally littered with gory people-chunks, entire sections filled with naked prisoners fighting tooth and nail with blood-soaked crewmen armed with chainsaws, other prisoners turning amongst themselves and eating each other while hurling feces at onlookers. Scenes like these, as well as other harrowing and often-dismembered sights, dominated the vast interior of the Charon IV.

To John, the non-presence of such insanity was very much to his relief, as the only thing unsightly in the bay was a man hanging upside down like a mistletoe. He was eviscerated, and his guts were hanging out like some kind of inverted piñata filled with human intestines.

John would’ve screamed at the repulsive sight mere minutes ago, but after what he saw along the way…

Serv was directly under the intestine piñata, in front of a computer console and accessing the emergency escape controls with hurried taps on the keyboard. He was speaking as he typed madly. “Paul Briones started the revolution after he got back. He was Marshall of the Talambanian 4th company. They’re called the Ghosts, know why?”

“Why?” John asked, casually walking around Serv’s computer console and occasionally glancing at Serv and the piñata while keeping his distance. It smelled like shit, partially due to the puddle of proto-shit that Serv was unintentionally sitting on.

“Because they’re all supposed to be dead.” Serv said proudly. “They were the first in Connoltia Prime, you know?”

“Not really…” John said skeptically.

Ignoring that, Serv continued: “Viceroy Bouviere wanted him and his men dead…well, he wanted everyone dead, yeah. See, when the slavers and barons rounded up all the men, women and children for the war, they only took those who weren’t in sweat-mines or hooked on spice.”

“Well, that sucks.” John commented dryly. The whole sum of his attention was solely focused on a kidney that just fell from the overhead corpse. As it landed, it bounced off the floor with a wet ‘splorking’ sound. This intrigued John, and so he kicked it and sent it flying to the wall, where it exploded (with yet another ‘splork’) and left a big bloody smear.

“Yeah. And like I said, after the war, no one ever got home. They all ended up in Perdition’s techno-rape-fields, which we’ll be at pretty soon if I don’t figure this shit out.”

That wasn’t a very pretty thought, in John’s own honest opinion.

“So they all ended up getting techno-raped. Except for the Ghosts, who actually managed to escape. Thanks to Marshall Briones, they made it back to Talambania, and that’s how they got their name. They’re supposed to be dead, but they came back and started the revolution,” he paused, stopped typing, and then slumped on his bile-covered chair. “Aw…”

“What?”

“This ship’s Imperiat-made-” Serv said as he suddenly jumped off his chair as if it were on fire. “And there’s crap on this chair!”

“So…” another kidney fell down, and John kicked it aside. He went beside Serv (though, being a tallish person, he had to dodge the curtain of entrails). “What’s wrong?”

“Not just that, the TechnoPriests made it,” Serv said as he wiped the shit off his pants and then slammed his fist on the keyboard in revulsion. “So all the fancy commands have to be inputted in MekaLingus, the TechPriest’s technoconfabulated language.”

“Can you-”

“No, I can’t,” Serv cut him off as he wiped his hands on his shirt. “Which is why I’m…I don’t know.”

“So,” John looked around the room for anything explosive. There was nothing. Except the kidneys… “How do we get out of this shit-ship?”

“I don’t know…” Serv muttered. And then he lifted his finger skyward, inadvertently pointing to the gutted hangman as an idea entered his mind. “Ah!”

“Yeah?” John looked at Serv’s bloody shit-covered fingers, looked up, and saw that blood was dripping from the hangman to Serv’s keyboard. “Want a hanky?”

“Thanks,” Serv replied courteously as he snatched the hanky and wiped his fingers with it. “Anyway, all we need to do is interrogate the ship’s TechPriest and-” Some blood landed on his nose and he looked up. “Oh…”

“Right.”

“Wait…” Serv tossed the hanky and climbed on top the computer console. He stuck his hands into the corpse’s pockets “The console has a card-slot, so all we need to do is swipe it and it’ll activate the escape pods… Hopefully, this guy here’ll have one.”

“Hopefully,” John said sardonically as he picked his blood-soaked hanky from the floor and then tossed it away upon noticing its blood-soakedness.

“C’mon, cheer up!” Serv commented as he cheerfully stuck his hand into the TechPriest. For a minute, he rummaged through the corpse. Pockets, chest cavity and all. Then, with a triumphant yell, he pulled out a bloody something and, in the process, caused blood and bile and organ-chunks to fly everywhere. “Aha, here we go!”

“Found it?” John asked as one of the flying globs of digested food landed right on his head.

“Yeah,” Serv held out the bloody card for both of them to see. It looked very much like a golden credit card, save for the fact that it was all covered up in bile (somehow, it ended up lodged in the piñata’s colon). “See? Shiiiny…”

“Right. Want another hanky?” John asked. Then, as if in response, the room was suddenly engulfed in darkness. “Not again! What is it this time?!”



This time, there was no moaning, no blood-lit pulsations, no whispers. The lights flickered back to life, and as putrid bile silently oozed from the piñata-man’s exposed entrails, the doors slid open with a hiss. Behind the doors was darkness. It was where they came from, where they ran past halls strewn with the bodies of half-eaten women and children. Some of the women had their pregnant wombs ripped open, and their umbilical cords used to strangle the children. The children, while asphyxiating, reached out for them in a futile attempt at grasping for life. Now they were dead, their lifeless eyes bulging out of their sockets.

Darkness obscured the unsightly mess of blood and gore, of death, and from that same darkness, a figure stepped out into the light.

“Serge?” John gaped, dumbstruck. The holy man walked into the room calmly, with his eyes closed. He did not want to see the things that were covered by the darkness, the grotesque sights that could not be obscured by the mere absence of light. He was uttering silent prayers, and cradled on his arms was what looked like a girl. She was wrapped in a blood-stained blanket.

“You made it,” Serv said unbelievingly. He too was at a lost of words. “Are you alright?” he asked as he rushed to Serge’s side.

“I am unhurt, my friend,” the missionary replied solemnly as he continued walking into the room. Serv offered to carry the girl, but he refused. “Thank you, but the burden she carries is mine to bear. I assume you have found a way out of this forsaken starship?”

“Yeah, we did.” John said cheerfully.

“Yeah, I did,” Serv corrected. He got his bloody credit card, wiped the blood off with his shirt, and then swiped it on the computer’s card-slot.

The computer took several seconds to process the bloodstained data, and while it did so, its monitor flashed green with cascading strings of glyphs (MekaLingus), and then it acknowledged the card’s digital command with a disembodied voice that announced: “Emergency protocols initiated. All escape pods will be jettisoned in five minutes. Emergency countdown begins…now.”




Five minutes later…


The jettisoned pods floated off into space, their tiny rockets pushing them as far away from the rusting space-sarcophagus as possible.

Of all of them, only one carried living human beings inside. Perhaps everyone else in the Charon was dead – the vast majority of them were. Or perhaps there were some who were still alive, still sane, and soon they would discover that their only escape from the forsaken starship had, in turn, left them to die inside the death-filled hulk as it drifted through the void, left them entombed in its bloodstained bulkheads. Forsaken.

In one of the Charon’s life pods were four survivors – an enigmatic freedom fighter with shit on his pants, an insane war-vet who spent the previous week in a septic tank full of shit, a noble missionary condemned for following the word of his god, and a little girl rescued from an all but incomprehensible hell…


“Got yourself a souvenir, eh?” John asked Serge, eyeing a rucksack the missionary brought along with the girl. She was still unconscious, strapped to a chair right beside Serge.

“Indeed,” Sergius replied. He looked out of the pod’s window, to the vast emptiness of space – although this time, it wasn’t very empty. Looming in the black was an orb of blue, a planet. It was growing larger with every passing minute.

“Talambania, girls and gentlemen,” Serv declared proudly. “Planetfall in under an hour… plenty of time to figure out how to steer this thing.”

Just read the whole thing at a stretch and damned if I don't like it. Goofy and fucking creepy at the same time.

Is it actually set in the world of 'Warhammer 40,000'? Some scenes remind me of the film 'Event Horizon'.

Dude, this rocks. Kind of reminds me a bit of Doom III, with the red lights and gorriness. The humor is very dark and absurd. I like it! Go write some more of this...

It's a private universe, but its been described as a cross between Hitchhiker and 40k. The 40k bit comes from my experiences with Doom 3, where I ended up screaming my head off...

Anyway, some say what I've written is very, very disturbing, and I'm glad you folks agree :p

Sidewinder wrote:Is it actually set in the world of 'Warhammer 40,000'? Some scenes remind me of the film 'Event Horizon'.

Many have commented that Event Horizon is very 40K-esque, so I'm not surprised.

In any case, nice one Shroom-- I'll read more when I'm at work...

That may not be very wise, if your employer finds you reading about eviscerated babies :p

BTW, me and my friend are working together on it. So while I'm the one doing the typing, it's 50% his and 50% mine. We're geniuses.

Landing


Feburi 17, 1012 A.E.


It was less than twenty-four hours after Mother’s Day, the most sacred celebration of the Matriarch’s Ascension, marked by the grand Tekno-Festivus of Mekka.

And while the binary suns of Talambania rose above the dunes of its desert wastes, vaping the early-morning dew and causing all forms of mammalians to sweat uncomfortably, a big metallic thing that could only be described as big burned through the skies and struck the ground with an impact so big that it could only be described with a very big ‘boom’.

Ground zero was instantly enveloped in a mushroom cloud of dust and sand, as well as vaporized chunks of the object. And as the very big cloud disappeared, one could see an equally big crater on the ground. It was filled with all forms of immolated debris, from twisted metal to burning things that were on fire.

Later on, as the suns reached their zenith (a position that would allow them to cook alive anything foolish enough to wander around in the desert wastelands waiting to be cooked alive), three figures could be seen staggering away from the crater, making their way towards a massive dune that happened to be nearby. Behind them, the remnants of their vehicle rose out of the crater in the form of thick black smoke. Absolutely nothing was left of the escape pod.



“Gee, I wonder how we made it,” John disbelievingly asked himself. His flamboyant tropical shirt was now very, very tattered, and bits of it were blackened and smoking. If not for the desert noon’s unbearable heat that cooked things alive, which induced in smelly mammalians vast quantities of sweat needed to prevent being cooked alive, his shirt would still have been burning by now.

“I don’t know. The escape pod’s totally trashed,” Serv replied. He too was sweating profusely, and would still have been on fire if not for his profuse sweat.

“What escape pod?” John asked, gesturig at the column of smoke behind them. “There’s nothing left of it!”

“Indeed,” Serge the missionary said, cradling in his arms the girl he rescued. The last time he was in agreement with John was right before they escaped their cell by murdering those crewmen from the Charon (though in this case, ‘right before’ was synonymous with ‘half-a-week before’). “It is a miracle that we got out alive, and for that I thank the Maker.”

“Right,” John muttered, discreetly rolling his eyes and muttering something inaudible between his dehydrated panting. Back home, he had his own fair share of fanatics and nuts. Wannabe martyrs with crazy-ass superstitious nonsense… “Anyway, Serv-”

“Yeah?” Serv was in front of their group, and was already more than halfway up the sand dune. “What?”

“I reckon that since this is your home, you might know where we should go,” John said as he tried to catch up with him. Unfortunately, the beatings he obtained weeks ago and the crammed cell he spent the vast majority of his time in the Charon had him reduced to a feeble staggering half-jog limp that was, needless to say, very feeble. The suns-induced dehydration didn’t help, either. “So…do you?”

By now, Serv was on top of the dune, surveying the desert wastes. His hand was protecting his eyes from the binary suns’ glare, his long dark brown dreadlocks gleaming under their blinding rays. “Yeah…”

“How?” John asked as he hobbled his way up the dune. In a few minutes, he managed to get on top. He gasped lazily and rolled on his back. “So, how do we get out of here? I’m cooking alive.”

“See that smoke coming off from over there?” Serv was pointing at something far ahead, something that John could not see in his current position.

“The crash site?” John asked feebly, not even bothering to look.

“No, that one over there, near the horizon. You see it?”

“Sure,” not really.

“Yesterday was Mother’s Day, the Matriarch’s birthday,” Serv explained proudly. “So, in commemoration of her majesty’s ascension, the TLF set the largest spice depot on Talambania on fire. Magnesium-thermite and white phosphorus!”

John, being always interested in big explosions, looked up and immediately saw the big plume of reddish smoke that rose up into the sky. The sight was blurred by the desert’s heat-distorted air, but the plume’s bigness was unmistakably big. “Woah. That’s some serious fireworks.”

“Like?”

“Yeah,” and then something occurred to him. Spice was hypernarcotic and neuropsionic, people inhaling it everywhere would be a Bad Thing. And a plume like that… “Hey, wait, won’t vaporizing the stuff make it spread?”


“Nah, spice looses its weirdo properties when exposed to temperatures above a thousand degrees,” Serv said. “The TLF does this all the time, blowing stuff up, keeping the struggle alive. Anyway, the smoke’s from Edrine. Follow the smoke, we end up in Edrine. The City of Splendors.”

“What?”

“You’ll see…”

“So, how far is it?” John asked.

“A day’s walk, maybe more if one of us succumbs to heat-stroke.” Serv said nonchalantly, shrugging once more.

“Oh…damn.”



As they plodded across the desert with the pace of a dried-up slug, the suns were cooking them alive to death. So, inevitably, John had to start some kind of conversation in order to stave off the effects of heat-induced dementia. The only topic worth discussing was the War, since talking about the weather or the very dehydrated skeletons they found in the sand would be too depressing. And so, they talked. Or at least John and Serv did. Serge the missionary prayed, and occasionally mumbled to himself (though, arguably, both were the same thing).

“So, yeah, I was handpicked by Marshall Briones to join the 4th Company, the Ghosts. We were elite, went all over the galaxy during the War. Saw a lot of stuff, blew most of it up,” Serv answered, shrugging. “Funny, really. We saw how miserable the Imperiat was when we were going from one warzone to another. The refugees, even the captives, had it better than most of the people here…”

“That’s shit…” John muttered.

“Yeah, it is. And by ‘we were going from one world to another’, I meant the 4th Company. Rest of the Imperiat’s guys never make it off the holes they land in. How ‘bout you? Ever fought in the war? You look the type…”

“As a matter of fact, I did. Went with a bunch of fanatics and nuts called the Bethanian Martyr’s Corps,” John shrugged. “Saw lots of stuff, blew all of it up.”

“I heard you guys were at Torran-”

“Yeah, we were. Remember that avalanche?” John said, remembering fondly those harrowing frostbitten days, he almost missed Torran’s blistering cold

“The one that buried three thousand cunts alive? When some idiot accidentally tac-nuked a glacier?” Serv asked, amusedly outraged. Oh, cunt was short for Connoltian.

“Hey!” John protested. “We did it on purpose!”

“Right,” Serv replied, rolling his eyes. “And I suppose that explains the battalion of Rhineworld blitzpanzers you nearly killed.”

“What? How was I supposed to know that the glacier was going to break apart and bury everyone in glow-in-the-dark snow?” John said defensively as he spread his arms apart. “Besides, that’s why we said it was an accident.”

Serv stared at him in disbelief and amazement, although he was amazed for all the wrong reasons. And then he laughed. “You know what? I think the TLF could use a guy like you” he jokingly said.

“Sure, whatever,” John replied. “Get me off this desert alive and I’ll even give you the fillings out of my fuckin’ teeth.”

“Alright,” Serv turned to Serge the missionary who, for the duration of the exhausting journey, was totally immersed in his own prayers. “And you father? Since you only need me to get you through this inferno of a desert, where will you be after we reach Edrine?”

“I suppose I will let the Almighty decide my fate,” Serge the missionary sighed as he held the girl he saved closer to his side, covering her with his cloak to shield her from the scorching heat.

“Who is she anyway?” John asked.

“Yeah, I’d like to know too,” Serv added.

Their questions were met only by silence. Father Augusta seemed uninterested at first but after awhile he looked out into the shimmering horizon and sighed. “Perhaps when we have the chance to sit down and rest I shall bestow upon you my tale.”

“I’ll hold you to that, after all you do owe me for getting you out of that prison ship, and you will owe me after getting you out of this desert …you know that?” Serv winked and then turned to John. “You too Bethanian, be thankful I didn’t leave you to rot in the many times I could’ve.”

“Like I said: Just get me out of this ratfuck desert alive” John grunted, collapsing to the ground in exhaustion.

“The City of Splendors”



Finally, they arrived.

Edrine, the city of splendors. Its minarets were jutting upwards towards the sky, protruding from the surrounding vastness of buildings. Multitudinous dwellings of all sorts, some made from sand-brick, others from cold steel, and even a few from dried feces composed this semi-urban sprawl. In turn, this sprawl was bordered by the city’s walls, which were ancient and in a state of perpetual decay. The city’s walls also served as a public urinal (not that John cared, his bladder being as full as a dried raisin).

As our weary band of travelers made their way into Edrine, they passed through one of the gaping holes in the western wall, which led directly to the city’s notorious bazaar.



The Bazaar was truly a sight to behold; there were people of all shapes, sizes and color, acrobatic midgets were everywhere, dancing on their podiums with their peg-legs. It seemed like almost everything could be bought, bartered or sold. Spice was peddled everywhere despite the TLF’s recent attack, and there were the slavers who rented huge dark-skinned steroidified pseudomutaloids, there were beasts in cages that dragged their screaming midget-keepers in and devoured them alive before spitting out their bones, there were swamis with singing cobras on fire, naked children being chased by oil-drenched crocodiles, pools of bioluminescent wine that came from the urine and semen of sandworms mixed with spice and exotic fruit, armless slaves sold for spare change, hairy ape-people in denim suspenders playing banjoes.

There were none of the flying cars John was accustomed to, instead there were busted up wagons and beast-drawn caravans, litters carried by the steroidified pseudomutaloids owned by obese spice barons whose flab had swallowed up their legs, postapocalyptic biker gangs with outrageous hair, leather jackets and spikey chainmail. Instead of sword-swallowers, there were mongoloids who shot themselves in their mouths with machineguns and spat out violet fire. There were Saracens, dark-skinned mercenaries with robes and crescent swords and railguns, there were ‘Cowboys’, homosexual hired-guns with handlebar moustaches and muscular-albino steeds with flowing golden hair that gleamed in the desert sun and mules with jetpacks. John ducked as one of the rocket-mules was snatched away by a flock of vulture-parrots as big as men.

And then there were the prostitutes. The good ones were sights to behold, nubile and bathed in the bioluminescent wine-semen-urine-fruit pools, lithe and with swollen jewel-encrusted nipples. They were dancing in their drunken revelry, eating phallus-shaped fruits and pleasing themselves with serpents while loving each other. They were eager to entice even the most hardened of homosexual midget-barons.

The bad ones though, were really bad. They were either anorexic or obese, and they were all hairy. Rotten teeth and eyepatches were the norm, and whenever John gazed at them, they eyeballed back with a repulsive puss-spewing glare that made him shiver. He directed his eyes downward but nearly vomited as he saw their umbilical cords draped with cheap jewelry, rusty nails and coated in spice. They saw this and cackled as they waved their penises at him.

Fortunately, the hags were sequestered at the bazaar’s northern end – which was a cesspool filled with all sorts of horrific horrors. There were hallucinating spice fiends who were contorting their own bodies in order to orally pleasure themselves, there were insane naked people clubbing conjoined mimes with their own severed limbs while throwing feces into each other’s mouths. There were techno-beggars with circuit boards nailed to their faces – Serv told John that they were exiled techpriests who gambled away their own bodyparts for spice. Some of the spicefiends were necrophiliacs, and when there were not enough corpses to go around, the unfortunate ones would hit withdrawal and bury their own faces in the ground to suffocate.

Some of the suffocating fiends waved hi to Serv.

“I worked with some of them when I was undercover,” Serv explained to John and Serge the missionary. “Do you see that huge domelike structure nearby?”

“Indeed, it looks like a cathedral from Immaculada,” Serge the missionary answered.

“Well, it’s anything but a cathedral. It’s a coliseum where they have bloodthirsty gladiatorial duels,” Serv said with an amused smile. Under their feet, a spice fiend choked to death on some bioluminescent feces. “Sometimes, there would be steroidified pseudomutaloids fighting condemned techno-midgets riding mutated elephants, while other times man-sized salamanders, manticores and raccoons would be set loose on amazons wearing burning armor and using flaming weapons.”

“Don’t they die from wearing burning armor?!” John asked, visibly confused. “I mean, that just doesn’t make any-”

He was cut off by a screaming spice fiend who was being swallowed whole by a giant tortoise.

Once more, John was agape at the insane inanity of what he beheld. Right beside him, Serge the missionary was covering the girl’s eyes while uttering as many prayers as he could, as fast as he could.

Serv nonchalantly walked in front of them. “So, how do you like it, guys?”

“It’s a decadent cesspool of dogshit in a boiling soup of ape-piss sprinkled with a bit of dandruff,” John exclaimed. “I hate it, I want to go home!”

“Well, too bad, if you want to get to the nearest spaceport through the desert that’s fine with me” Serv shrugged. “Otherwise, we’ll be spending the night here.”

“What?!”

“Yeah. I’ll have to find our host though, a fellow named Quandrius. He should be around here. Shouldn’t be hard to miss,” Serv said as he stepped over a spice fiend rolling in a hole filled with bioluminescent feces.



Serv found Quandrius’ tent, it was big and guarded by a turbaned Saracen with a crescent sword and a lasgun, and a Cowboy with a leather whip that crackled with electricity, two magnum revolver-bolters, and a pair of crotchless pantaloons. The sand on the tent was glassed, apparently in an attempt to sterilize it from the bazaar’s inhuman filth. It was still warm.

Serv walked towards the Cowboy and said: “Still working for fatso, eh, Ledger?”

“Ain’t you s’pposed to be dead?” The Cowboy, Ledger, answered with the pre-packaged accent that all cowboys came with from birth.

“Just let us in, alright?” Serv mockingly pleaded. Then he whispered: “Wouldn’t want the fatso to know about you and Jake, would we?”

“Why you!” Ledger growled. For a few seconds, he stuttered, fumbled, and then his shoulders slouched in defeat. “A’yt, c’mon in. But them greenhorn yokels stay outside, ya hear?”

“Yeah, I hear,” Serv said as he walked in. “Play nice, okay?”

“So…” John said, attempting to start a conversation while trying to not stare at the cowboy’s exposed codpiece too much. “How’s the wild west? Ride on to the sunset, much?”

“Shut it, you!” Ledger barked, cracking his whip before muttering something about greenhorns with Hawaiian shirts and fringe world yokels.

“Yeehaw,” John mumbled, rolling his eyes.



“Ah,” Quandrius exclaimed with his raspy voice as he rolled towards Serv. “Good to see you again, we all thought you were dead! Would you like some wine? It’s fresh semen from an inbred golden sandworm!”

“Cut the formalities, Quid,” Serv spat as he jumped back. Quandrius was so fat he had his legs replaced with tank-like treads that had the tendency to crush other people’s feet.

“Always straight to business, eh?” Quandrius laughed, raising his head backwards and forcing Serv to look at his triple goiters. Among other interesting features, Quandrius’ fingers had at least thirty rings on them, and they were irremovable due to his fatness. He also had a purple robe that covered his upper torso, obscuring his reverberating gut. “So, what do you want?”

“I need a room with three beds, air-conditioning and room-service. Breakfast would be nice too,” Serv said, as if reading off a list in his head. “And I need transportation.”

“Ah,” thanks to his raspy voice, Quandrius sounded like he was trying to spit out something stuck in his throat. “All this? But I thought you wanted-”

“Change of plans, Quid. Get me what I need and I’ll call it even.”

“Ah okay, the room I can provide. I recently ‘acquired’ the residence of a mid-level merchant who unfortunately decided to commit suicide in a dumpster, here’s the address,” he stuck his hand into his robe and pulled out a piece of paper from his flabs. It smelled like stale cheese. “But the transportation, I’m afraid my hands are tied. Maybe your old friend, Hamid.”

“I thought he was in jail in Villamoore, or dead even”

“Ah, he was. But then the warden got the plague and died. He got out when the jailers were busy burning the body. It’s a miracle he reached Edrine, he did a few favors for me and now he has a new shop in the old district”

“Oh…”

Quandrius took out another piece of paper from his flab. Serv hesitantly took it. “Here’s his address.”

“Thanks,” Serv said.

There was an awkward moment of silence between the both of them, and then Quandrius said: “Are you sure you don’t want some wine? It’s fresh bioluminescent semen from an inbred-”

“No. I know what that piss is all too well”

“Suit yourself” Quandrius seemed genuinely disappointed.

“Oh, on second thought, yes, I’d like some wine,” Serv said, smiling.

“Good! Ah, very good. Take this chalice with you too, consider it a welcome-back-from-the-dead gift!” Quandrius said, pouring some wine from a jug into the cup.

“Thanks. Well, see you around, Quid.”

“It is always a pleasure! And welcome once more to the City of Splendors!”



As Serv exited the tent, he walked over to John (who was busy looking at the ground while Ledger glared at him and gripped his whip). He handed him the chalice, which glowed slightly due to its contents. “Here, you look parched.”

“Shiny,” he gulped it down with one gulp. “Gee, thanks. That was pretty good, what was it?”

Serv gave him a weird look and then shook his head. “Nevermind, I got us a room. Let’s go, it’s late. Or would you rather stay out and enjoy the nightlife?”

It was John’s turn to give him a look. “No.”

Come on, no replies? Feh!

Think of this as an intermission number.



Eons before the after-earth, the great Techno-Soul bestowed upon mankind the gift of Singularity.

Singularity was Eden, a paradise where all was as it should be. There were no TechnoPriests then, they were not necessary, for there was no technoconfabulation.

Man lived in perpetual comfort, for his machinery was so incomprehensibly superior that he lived with no worries, no suffering.

The dominion of man stretched from one end of the Great Beyond to the other, on countless worlds orbiting countless suns, there were a countless multitude of human beings – pure and unmolested by the curse of mutation, unplagued by disease.

The Techno-Soul made humanity whole, of one mind. And all was good.



But then, something happened. And the Techno-Soul was lost.

Singularity was destroyed.

And all was no longer good.



Man, in his pampered state, did not know what to do when his mechanical creations failed him. Traveling through the Great Beyond was now no longer possible. And as darkness encompassed the cosmos, he was blinded.

Humanity was no longer whole. Humanity no longer had the Techno-Soul to guide him.

And so, towards the end of the glorious Age of Mystery, mankind was cursed by technoconfabulation, by strife, and by disease and mutation.

He could no longer use or maintain his machines.

He could no longer live in peace with himself.

His body failed him.

And his descendants were deformed – born in the form of hideous midgets or suffering from gigantification.

With all that once was now lost, man staggered feebly, weak and confused.



All seemed lost.

But there was one who opposed the decay of what was once-glorious. And with her arcane knowledge, she brought order and pleasantness to a sector most plagued with chaos and unpleasantness.

She was Mother. The Matriarch.

And as those from other stars formed nations and rebuilt their civilizations using esoteric profanities such as ‘sciences’ and blasphemous ‘artificial intelligences’, Mother instilled upon Her People the true knowledge of the Techno-Soul.

And so it was, that on the after-earth, Mother ascended and gave us the gift of the MekaLingus - entrusted to the most sacred followers of the Kult of TeknoFabrikatus, the TechnoPriests – which is most necessary for communing with the teknospiritus.


On this ascension, on the mark of the after-earth, came the beginnings of the Imperiat, marked by what would come to be known as Mother’s Day.



And from that day on, all would be well…





- Read by mechaphyte Schneider von Totenkoph. Eve of Mother's Day, Feburi 16, on the 1012th of the after-earth.

A Moment’s Peace



The building was located at downtown Edrine and stuck out like a sore thumb on a stick. It was made out of sandbrick, as opposed to the dried-up manure that dominated the impoverished locale, and had a Saracen-styled dome. Aside from that, it was also surrounded by bushes of razorwire with euphoric spice fiends tangled up in them.

“Indeed, it does look rather homely,” Serge the missionary observed. The girl he rescued was previously walking around in a trance, but she collapsed inexplicitly. And now he was cradling her in his tired arms. “And would be a welcomed reprieve from all of this senseless… senselessness.”

“Well, yeah,” John nodded. A tiny child (or was it a midget?) walked up to him, grabbed his Hawaiian with shrivelled up stump-arms and begged him for food - or spice, which Serv said passed for food in these parts. He shooed the kid away. “Piss off, kid!”

As the kid sulked by the barbwire bush, paying no heed to the spice fiends who were giggling incessantly while being nibbled to death by geckoes, Serv walked up and kicked the building’s dilapidated door open – causing all forms of lizards and tarantulas to fly into the air. As they scuttled away to nibble on the now-bloody and still-laughing spice fiends, Serv said welcomingly: “Come on in!”



Serge the missionary was actually right. The place was rather homely. On the walls were tapestries and swords mounted Saracen-style. There were unlit lamps hanging from the lizard-infested ceiling, and scattered all around were hardwood sofas that proved troublesome until Serv lit on the bloody flashlight he got from the Charon. As John and Serge staggered around, Serv found some matchboxes (which doubled as scorpion-nests) at the dirty kitchen and began lighting up some lamps. “Hopefully, Quid got this place recently… go look around, guys.”

The refrigerators weren’t really refrigerators, but cooled techno-barrels filled with ice, bottles of cheap beverages and sausages – or at least John hoped they were sausages. The fridges were still running, and the wieners didn’t look like they had spider eggs in them, which was a good thing. Shopping for groceries in Edrine was definitely not an option. In fact, eating spiderlings seemed like the better alternative.

Serge laid the girl on a sofa and rummaged through the cupboard, finding canned food rations, plates, and spatulas. He placed some of the stuff on a table and had a thought. “I shall prepare a meal for all of us, and mayhaps while we dine, we could discuss what comes next.”

“Sounds good to me, Father,” Serv replied. “Baylor?”

“Food is good.” Came the reply. They all turned to see John contently nibbling on an uncooked and still-frozen wiener.



They dined on boiled sausages (which, to John, tasted mysteriously like spider) and drank expiredly refreshing fruit juice.

“So, how do we get out of this hole?” John asked, nibbling on a now-cooked wiener. “There are starports on this shithole, right?”

“Yeah, there are,” Serv said, struggling to spoon some sausage slices with his spatula. “Two, in fact. One in Villamoore and one on an island off-shore. The island is a military base, so its definitely not an option.”

“And the one on Villamoore?” Serge the missionary asked. “Certainly it will allow civilian passage.”

“Yeah, but its highly regulated,” Serv shrugged. “Space travel is mostly done by high-class people - nobles, slavers, spice barons, assholes. Also, inspections are done by mechaphytes of the TechnoPriests, and I doubt they’d allow a practitioner of a ‘heretical faith’ to go through without a visit to the auto-excruciators. I’m sorry, Father.”

“Ah,” Serge nodded sagely.

“How ‘bout me?” John asked.

“It’s not really a safe place, really. Security’s tight due to the recent events and if they ever see Father Sergius with us, we’ll all be sent to the excruciators,” Serv said. “And I’m not your travel agent; I’ve got important revolutionary matters to attend to. You know, liberate the oppressed, bomb some spice depots, fight the good fight, the never-ending struggle and all that.”

“Aw…” John slouched. He was stuck here…in this place. “Fuck.”

“But here’s what I can do,” Serv said optimistically. “You guys can come with me!”

“What?!” John gasped. The weenie he was chewing fell from his gaping mouth.

“Yeah. It’s not safe here, we’ll have to leave soon,” Serv shrugged. “Me and my associates can shelter you, and you guys can decide on what to do while things cool down. Eh, don’t worry, John. We take in schmucks like you all the time, anyway. Besides, you served in the war, right?”

“Yeah,”

“Here,” Serv tossed him the pistol he got from the Charon. “The door’s open, guard it. Don’t want anything to come in and eat us, right?” John nodded. “I’ll look around. If we’re lucky the guy who owned this house was an arms dealer.”



Father Sergius was washing the dishes when the girl woke up. She walked to him and tugged his robes.

“Yes, my child?” Sergius asked gently, kneeling down to her height. “What is it?”

“Where are we? Father Serge…?” she asked wiping the dried up tears in her eyes

Sergius shrugged. “We are on the desert world of Talambania, far from home. But do not worry, all will be-”

“I’m hungry,” she mewed.

“Oh…indeed!” he said, holding up a finger. He got a bowl of sausages and some juice and placed them on the now-empty dining table. “Here, my child, some sustenance.”

She looked at the sausages with wide-eyed awe. “Thank you.”



John was sitting on a couch. He was slouching, which accentuated the protrusion of his gut, and was holding his pistol with both hands. He was waiting, anticipating. Nightfall came very quickly, no thanks to the burninated spice in the air. And the darkness probably brought along with it incomprehensible Bad Things far beyond the stuff he saw at the bazaar – though he found it hard to imagine things worse than the things from the bazaar.

He was expecting something to explode through the doorway he was guarding. Probably an umbilical-corded bucktoothed hermaphrodite with a chainsaw. Or conjoined mimes riding tortoises. Or worse yet, an andro –

There was a rushed noise coming from the stairway. It was Serv. John lowered his pistol and turned on the safeties.

“Hey!” Serv shouted for all of them to hear. “Look what I found!”

“What?” John asked, perplexed. He placed the pistol on the couch and walked towards him.

“The guy was a hashish dealer or something!”

“And so?”

“And so, I got his equipment! You dick,” Serve held up a thick pot-like object with tubes coming out of it. The tubes were connected to respirators, and despite not knowing what hashish was, John immediately knew what the contraption was for. He grinned.

“What is with the commotion?” Serge the missionary asked, coming in from one of the building’s rooms. He was tucking in the girl when Serv started screaming.

“Oh, nothing,” Serv shrugged. “Just found a relaxer… The Saracens use this to give themselves serenity after battle. It’s for…uhm…self-enlightenment! Yeah!”

“Indeed?” Serge asked, intrigued.

“Yeah. Want to join us?” Serv asked, smiling innocently.

“Yes, perhaps I will.”



They placed ‘herbs’ in and began inhaling through the respirators. Their breathing made sounds, like some sort of death-rattle from some sort of evil space-antagonist, and John found it funny.

“So, Serge, about the little girl,” John said, his voice ominously distorted by the mask. He inhaled, and then he exhaled. Due to the apparatus, his breathing became an evil hiss that sounded really-really evil. He looked Serge in the eye, evilly. “Are you her father?”

“What?!”

“Shut up, guys,” Serv snapped, sounding really evil through the respirator. “Just relax…”

And so they did. And as the minutes passed, reality began to blur into an unreal non-reality that was not really real. Really. All of a sudden, they could hear music coming out of nowhere. It was mellowing and trippy, something unhygienic war protestors who refused to shave would enjoy. The background music was constantly loudening and their surroundings began to brighten and blur up. For some reason, it looked happier. Fuzzier too. Like a cute woodland critter.

A technicolored one, too. The bright blurry fuzzy surroundings, which had an accompanying soundtrack, suddenly began developing colors. Nice colors. Happy colors! Happy colors that pulsated randomly and occasionally morphed into random shapes. Colors that went from green to orange and then to a contrasting mixture of purple, violet and indigo, and then to ultraviolet – whatever color that was – before turning back into pink and infrared polka dots and then to orange and invisible stripes and finally to vanilla and cheese.

It felt like floating. Floating to the very edge of the atmosphere, so high that the lack of oxygen would make you feel light headed and happy, before falling down a million miles, burning up in the atmosphere and then exploding upon landing on some poor sap’s head. All while grinning maniacally going ‘whee!’

A winged unicorn with pink fur passed by John and he smiled sheepishly. It was lovely. The three of them turned their heads to watch the unicorn jump through the wall of colors and disappear into a puff of sparkly fireworks, and as they turned their heads, the respirators slid off their grinning faces and herbal psychedelics began pumping into the air.

John looked at his shirt and squealed with glee, for his Hawaiian was now populated by two-dimensional little blue people in white hats and trousers. He clapped his hands and kicked his feet like a little child as the tiny blue people began procreating.

Serge the missionary rocked from side to side on his stool, his face aghast and mortified with horror yet euphoric and happy with happiness. He was humming hymns. Swing low, swing chariot!

Serv looked like he melted onto his seat. His dreadlocks oozed and morphed into multicolored coral snakes. The serpents smiled and winked at John and he gasped.

“What are you looking at?!” Serv snapped. For some reason, he had a limey accent. “Sod off, you stupid git!”

“Wha?” John asked, befuddled. And then he smiled stupidly. “Teeheeehee!”

“And what’s with that bloody shirt?!” Serv asked. “I say, that has to be the most gay-liest thing I have ever seen!”

John grinned and nodded his head.

Serv eyed him up. “Palm trees and sunflowers?”

“Yea-”

“Well then, mister smartypants, let me tell you something, m’lad!” Serv said loudly as he got off his chair. His accent was now alternating between a limey and an angry leprechaun-man with a shillely. In fact, he went so far as to whack John with the invisible leprechaun-cane and John yelped in invisible-pain. “I was in the war, ye know?”

“Really?” John asked, rubbing his invisible head-bruise.

“Yeah, in fact, I was at the Cunts fuckin’ homeworld at the end of it, y’know?” the crazy dreadlocked limey leprechaun man declared. Bagpipes played in the background along with the trippy hippie-music. “I was there, with me shillely, an’ me an’ the boys were sent to storm the palace, ye know? Played the bagpipes before imminent death, y’see? Or was it the guitar?”

“Uhh-“

“Shut it, you queer-faced wanker!” Serv the Anglo-Saxon said angrily. “I was there, with m’captain, Marshall Briones, an’ the thousands an’ thousands of angry, hairy, grunting, screaming Cunts! They fucked us! Those cunts!”

“Yay!” John giggled.

“But we was smart, y’see?” he pointed to his forehead. “We went to the pub instead, had a pint or two while everyone else got in deep shite! The pub’s owner was a total git too, so we shot him! Had a merry time b’fore goin’ out an’ getting shot up again! T’was a great time!” He sighed and collapsed onto his chair. “Barkeep, get this laddie some gin and tonic!”

Serge the missionary suddenly got up, and he spoke with a deep voice: “You think you know about war? You think-”

“I was in the war too!” John said, raising his hand as if addressing a teacher.

“Shut up, you stupid git!” Serv said, smacking him in the face with his not-so-invisible fist. “An’ let the holy man speak!”

“Indeed. You think you have seen things?” Serge continued. “Fools! The lot of you! You know not what you speak of!”

“This is gonna be great!” Serv cheered.

“I have seen things, hideous things!” Serge’s arms were spread, and he was gesticulating while he preached. The psychedelic backdrop suddenly turned into an eerie bluish-ultraviolet, and the trance music was replaced by gothic choir. “The Maker knows the true horrors I beheld. Things incomprehensible to you sinners, you blasphemous, blasphemous fools!”

The holy man slammed a mighty fist onto a table, shattering it into splinters.

“I have seen the darkest darkness of the human heart! I have witness the atrocities it can commit!” Serge said, glaring at them. “Sodomy is a sin! Do not judge lest ye be judged! For the Whore of Babylon shall spread her legs, and feast upon the emissions of goats!”

“Holy smokes!” John gasped. “Geepers!”

“Do not turn your back to the Almighty, accept the Savior into you!” he proclaimed, collapsing to his knees and flailing his arms towards the heavens. The ceiling was now replaced by ominous clouds of blackness, and lightning flashed between the abysmal sky. “For there are daemons! Evil that lurks with every malice in your minds, and they shall consume your souls through every orifice of your body! Sanctify yourself! The End Times are near, do you know what lies ahead of us?”

John, who was covering his gaping mouth with his hands, asked feebly: “W-what?”

There were whispers in the air. Malicious ones that spoke in archaic tongues. Malevolent tongues. And then they ceased-

“Damnation!” Serge screamed. His flailing intensified. “We must repent to our Lord! We must repent to the Maker! Hallelujah!”

Serv whistled. “Woah, we must’ve gotten premium stuff-”

“Silence!” Serge roared. And then his voice grew quiet; “Earth was destroyed for its decadence, the Maker smote it after they refused to heed the Good News.” He got up and brushed his robes, and happy colors returned along with the trance music. “The choice between salvation, and an eternity of suffering is ours! Praise be the Maker! Testify!”

“Hey, so whats with the girl?” John asked. “Is she your father?”

“She is Diabolos! She will be the death of us all, for encaged within her is a Daemon!” Serge screamed wildly, waving his arms as if pretending to be a helicopter and, in the process, making it look like he was dislocating his limbs. “The Maker Himself spoke to me in a vision,” he declared, gesturing to the heavens. “And I was tasked with the solemn duty of saving her sou-”

But before Sergius could finish his ministrations, something happened.

There was a polite knock on the door.

And then it exploded.

And from the smoke and dust crawled in a Gila Monster. It was pulsating purplish-orange, and from its mouth blorked out a fat blue-colored tongue.

Serge shrieked, no longer preaching hellfire and brimstone. And as John shouted “Jumping Jehosaphats!” Serv could only groan and slap his forehead.

“Ah, shite…”

Fear and Loathing in Edrine... This story gets increasingly more bizarre by the paragraph. I like it.

I asked my partner for the details of the yeah...since I had a hard time figuring out. And so, we laughed our assess off. You'll know which part I'm talking about. He's a genius.




Escape…Again



It felt really familiar, really. Being bludgeoned half to death by blunt objects. Getting yelled at by people wearing uniforms (although in this case, they wore chain mail vests rather than blue coats) before getting dragged kicking and screaming into a crammed cell with two other men thrown on top of you. Waking up with a sore brain, all covered up with blood and grime and dirt and human excrement. De ja vu. Somehow, John couldn’t figure out what was so eerily familiar. It all happened before…but when, he couldn’t tell.

Oh, and he was still rather very high from the previous incident.

If he hadn’t medicated himself before inhaling copious amounts of hallucinogenic smoke, things would’ve been worse. But not by much.



“Wake up you sorry sack of shit!” a voice shouted. It was a familiar voice.

“Wha-? Uhh…” John opened his eyes very slowly, afraid of what sights awaited his returning to consciousness, though he didn’t know why he was so afraid. As he opened them, he saw Serv and Serge the missionary standing over him. Around both of them were bars, which reminded him of happy times not too long ago.

For no apparent reason, it reminded him of some kind of hellish prison ship filled with mutilated corpses. But this time their cell wasn’t surrounded by many others, and was in a plain room with a wooden door on the other end. Also, the cell actually had a toilet bowl overfilling with…yeah. So the place was probably some kind of station for the chain mail police department. Not a hellish prison ship filled with mutilated corpses.

“See?!” Serv pointed out, bobbing his head around sleepily. He looked very stoned and very beat up. Literally. “I told you he’d be alright! Guy’s got a hard head!”

“Indeed,” Serge the missionary nodded wearily. “I have never seen such a blasphemous unbeliever sustain so violent a cranial battery. He might have been better off being burnt alive at a stake, as a sacrifice to the Maker perhaps.”

“Yes indeedy!” Serv agreed cheerfully as he helped John up. Both of them staggered and Serv laughed. “Woah, dude! Pine trees and sunflowers?”

“Wha?” John asked with a dumb look on his face. “Pine wha an’ huh…?”

“Your shirt!” Serv said as he poked John’s gut. His arms had nasty cuts which John hadn’t noticed before, and they were bleeding very badly. Probably from the pre-imprisonment beat up. Still, the guy looked pretty happy. “You fat git!”

“Oh!” John said, nodding his head. “Uh-huh.”

“Whatever,” Serv said nonchalantly. He saw something on the floor outside their cell and, naturally, he pointed at it and exclaimed: “Hey!”

“What?!” John asked, his voice shrill and painful to the ears.

“There!” Serv gasped.

He saw it and he too gasped. For right outside their cell was a gila monster, orange and with pulsating splotches of purple. “What is it, Serv? Is it real? Why is it on a leash? What’s that doggie bowl for? Why?!”

The overgrown lizard stared dumbly at John. And then its tongue blorked out. It was very blue.

“Hashish is illegal,” Serv said matter-of-factly. “And they use these reptilians to sniff them out. They glow purple when they catch whiff of any narcotic aside from spice.”

“Ah…” John said sagely, holding a finger up. The befuddled lizard in front of them resumed eating doggie treats from its doggie bowl.

“Hey, Serge!” Serv exclaimed again.

“What is it, heretic?” Serge the missionary responded, raising an eyebrow. “Do you wish to repent for your heresies as I minister the Sacramentals? Shall I read the Psalms of Purification? Or do you and your flamboyantly dressed consort wish to be united in holy matrimony?”

“Ummm…dude? No,” Serv said, staring at the holy man oddly. Must’ve been really good hashish. Really really good. “Where’s your girlfriend?”

“And…” John mumbled. “Is she your father?”

Sergius turned white, his mouth gaped open.

“Are you okay?” Serv asked, looking at Serge intently. “Dude?”

“No, you fool!” Sergius shouted very seriously. “You foolish fool! Maker forgive me! How could I have forsaken my anointed charge?! How could I?! How could I?!” He began pacing around, shoving aside Serv and John in the cell’s tightness. “Damn you! It was because of your incompetence!” He pointed at Serv. “Your ineptitude has damned us all!”

“Hey, relax!” Serv protested. “We’re in a jail, what’s the worse that can possibly-”

There was a bloodcurdling scream from outside. The rush of footsteps. And barging in from the door was an officer. He had a handlebar moustache and was clad in a chain mail vest.


And his eyes were bleeding.


Sergius gasped. “By the Maker…”

“Jimminy Crickets!” John gasped.

The chain mail clad officer opened his mouth and blood poured out of it. “Crikey…” he uttered with an accent before falling face first to the floor.

“That…” Serv said. “Must’ve been some really good hashish!”

“And look!” John exclaimed, pointing to something amidst the dead man’s vomited gore. “The guy dropped his keys!”

Serge reached out for it and grabbed it. “Quickly, let us leave this damned cell and find the girl! It is imperitive!”

“Say,” Serv piped up. “What’s the girl’s name?”

Sergius was silent, busy fumbling with the keys and uttering silent prayers.

“Let’s call her girl!” John said very enthusiastically, paying no heed to the sanguinated corpse beside him. “Girl…eee? Girlee. Girlie!”

The cell door slammed open and Father Sergius barged out. He looked around, paying no heed to the gila monster gnawing the dead officer’s face, and rushed through the other door.

There was a brief moment of silence where the only sound was that of a contented lizard’s chewing, and then John and Serv heard a scream of pure horror. Again.



The sight they beheld was not a very pleasant one. It was the opposite of pleasant, in fact. Gruesome, disturbing and disturbingly gruesome. In other words, yet another ordinary prison breakout for John Baylor and company.

The floor was sticky in blood and facedown on the floor were several twitching corpses clad in chain mail. Behind a table at the middle of the room was the chief of police – he looked very dead. And on his lap was a box of bloodstained donuts.

“Looks very familiar,” Serv noted. His demeanour was of oblivious nonchalance. John, on the other hand, was wide-eyed in shock. “What do you say of all this, Baylor? Familiar, no?”

“What’re you talking about?!” John replied in alarmed befuddlement. “I’ve never seen anything like this before! It’s horrible!”

Serv sighed. “You dick…”

At this, John protested, and at this, Serv yelled back. And while the two of them bickered and as John asked ‘what is a Charon IV?!’, Sergius rushed around the room looking for his anointed charge. He eventually found her huddled up in a broom closet, holding tightly his leather rucksack. He hushed her and once more cradled her within his arms.

As he exited the closet, he found John walking around with his arms spread out exasperatedly.

“What Charon IV?!” John shouted. He was madly pulling at his hair.

“You know?” Serv said. “Blood. Escape. Prison. Ship. Constables.”

John gaped in silent stupidity. He stuttered and then he screamed out, his face contorted in righteous fury: “What Constables?!”

Serv sighed and mumbled: “Nevermind…”

John shook his head and flapped his arms around like a headless ostrich. But before he could muster the strength to scream further, Serge the missionary shoved him aside and confronted Serv. “You brought us into this, heathen. Now you must get us out.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Serv said, looking from Serge the missionary to John to Serge the missionary’s child. “I told you guys I was going to give you new haven, I’ll give it to you. Yeah,” he paused. “Shut up, Baylor.”

“What?!”

“Anyway,” Serv cleared his throat. “I know someone who can get us out of here, I’ll explain on the way.”

“So…” John asked sheepishly. “What do we do now?”

Serv answered with but one word: “Run.”



No one bothered to chase them as they ran out of the police station. The officers were too busy being dead and everyone else was hiding from the midday heat (two suns and all). They ran a few blocks before stopping at an intersection to gasp for air.

“There’s two ways,” Serv said as he sucked in air. “The short way and the scenic route.”

“What’s the short way?” John asked. He was leaning on a lamppost to prevent from dropping face-first to the ground like a sack of potatoes.

“The long way’s through the slums and the short way’s through the bazaar’s northern section,” Serv said as he regained his composure. “I say we go through the bazaar since it’s shorter…”

For a brief moment, something flashed in front of John’s eyes. The face of a deformed prostitute, her sausage-nose with hairy moles on them, her bottom lips pierced by rusty nails. She cackled at him with a pus-spewing gaze, flicking her reptilian tongue at him. And then the image transmogrified into the sight of her wagging her penis at him, her penis that was wrapped by an umbilical cord stitched on by copper wire. John gaped. And then, in one violent motion, he viciously wrung his hands around Serv’s throat and screamed incoherently. “No! We. Not. Going. Bazaar. To.”

Serv nodded his head and struggled for air.

“You hear me?!” John screamed, mad-eyed and spewing spittle on Serv’s face. “To. Bazaar. Going. We. Not!”

Serv shook himself off John’s iron grip and tried to breathe.

Serge the missionary walked over to Serv and patted him on the back. “Indeed, the flamboyant heathen is correct. I too do not long to revisit that…place.”

“Okay…” Serv said, inhaling much-needed air. “Okay…but we have to improvise...”

John cocked an eyebrow. “Improvise?”



By improvise, Serv actually meant running through countless rundown shacks and alleys and alley-shacks. Through shit-filled canals and mud huts that weren’t really made out of mud but of manure instead, through pens of gila monsters overseen by midgets on hovering podiums, piggeries where swine rolled around contently in biodegradable filth to produce methane for the powerplants, through leech paddies where psuedomutaloids wrestled ambiguous looking beasts of burden to decide who would shoulder the chain-plows. Through warzones where dying spice fiends hurled stolen body parts at one other.

An eyeless, mouthless, legless and limbless fiend somehow latched itself on John’s feet, causing him to stumble and nearly get swarmed by similarly emasculated creatures that were attracted by his nice shirt. At this, John rolled around spastically, punching and kicking and biting and gnawing and screaming and cursing and headbutting until the semi-corpsified creeps decided they were better off hurling feces-coated entrails at one another. They scuttled away limblessly and continued to hurl feces at each other despite the absence of either arms or legs or genitals and sometimes even faces, occasionally performing acts of necrophilia.

Serv and Serge the missionary pulled him up and, happily together again, they went through yet another alley. This one was dominated by emaciated families staring blankly at dysfunctional holoscreens while smoking copious amounts of spice in their nostrils. Overhead, vulture-parrots circled eagerly, and nearby slaver trucks were discarding elderly slaves too feeble for further use. The gibbering geriatrics were thrown to the ground and were immediately flocked by starving vulture-parrots.

A particularly fattened and content vulture-parrot happily deposited a present on John’s head, and John thanked it by cursing it and threatening to eat its children.

After bypassing yet another alleyway filled with an almost identical sight, they finally came across a flattened patch of ground that passed for a road. Presumably, it led to wherever Serv was going to.



“Phew,” John sighed, wiping the bird-shit the vulture-parrot excreted upon his brutalized cranium. “Where next?”

Before anyone could answer his question, they all heard the unmistakable whir of hoverfans. Coming from one end of the road were police hovercraft. Each one was as big as a car and hovering right above the ground. Each one was piled on by an uncountable mob of officers - some had handlebar moustaches, others had salamander caps, Mohawks, shoulder spike-pads, gasmasks and all other forms of paraphernalia. Men, women, midgets, cowboys, hermaphroandrogynes – all wore chain mail vests and all were very angry. They waved around chains with hooks and revolvers and shotguns while the midgets had flintlocks and slingshots with grenades.

Leading the way was a tricycle driven by a Mohawked midget with noserings and a monacle, He had a leash and holding its end was a very angrily upset Mussleman with a turban and a mean-looking boomstick with a barrel with a flare-end. He had an unflinching gaze and his face was most definitely very mean and angry and upset and he had an undoubtedly unflinching gaze of anger. He had a retinue of half-naked Musslemen armed with chainsaw yo-yos and swastika-shaped swordguns. The leading Musslemen with the leash had a red-black and yellow vulture-parrot with an iron-wing that gleamed in the harsh desert suns of Edrine.

The vulture-parrot shrieked an ear-splitting shriek. And answering this nefarious cry, exploding out of mud-huts and killing at least a million bystanders (John counted very carefully), were monocycles with spikewheels and blowtorches – and riding them were cowboys in crotchless pantaloons with posing pouches and outrageous headgear.

The angry man with a turban pointed at the fugitives declared condemned to the auto-excruciators, but by then, they were nowhere to be seen.



Before John’s feeble mind could register this horrible sight, they ran. Ran to the other side of the road and into yet another series of alleyways filled with even more sights incomprehensible to the man in a Hawaiian shirt.

As they ran, Serv reached for his pants and pulled out a piece of paper that stank of stale cheese. “C’mon Quid, come on!” he read the fat man’s hierosanskrit handwriting and deciphered it. “Aha!”

From far behind, they could hear hovercrafts disgorge their content of badly dressed angry people. John looked back and was very much relieved to have lost sight of them. “Who were those village people?”

“The militia!” Serv shouted back. They ran past a door and he doubled back. “Over here, Hamid’s place!”

“What’s a hack-med?” John asked.

In answer to that question, Serv promptly grabbed John and slammed him through an iron door. As both of them stumbled into a nondescript building, with Serge the missionary and the girl named Girlie right behind them, they were eagerly greeted by a skinny elderly Saracen-man in robes.

“Ah!” the man exclaimed in a typical Saracen accent. “Ah! Ah! It is good to see you again Ser-”

Before he could continue, Serv covered his mouth with his palm and pressed him against the wall. “Listen, Hamid, I would love to chat with you right now and reminisce getting shot at by Cunts with swordguns and plasma rifles, but now is not the time or the place,” he released his hand. “We need help, the fat man told us you could help. Hamid, do you still have the old jalopy?”

“Ah!” Hamid exclaimed profoundly. “Ah! Yes, why I do have the old jalopy! I have actually been fixing it-”

“Great!” Serv looked behind his shoulder and saw John and Serge the missionary barricading the door with every piece of furniture they could get their hands on. “Can we borrow it?”

“Ah…yes, yes!” Hamid exclaimed profoundly some more. “But I just need to do some tweaking…some minor adjustments.”

“Right,” Serv nodded. “How long will it take?”

Hamid considered this for a second and then said brightly: “Ah, just a few minutes! Oh, but how rude of me! You are my guest, all of you! Kadija!”

From a doorway obscured by a veil came out a middle-aged woman in robes and a scarf. She took a moment to register the sight before her and then cheerfully opened her arms to welcome them. “Friends of Hamid are always welcomed here! Come, let me show you while my husband finishes tinkering with his toys.”



To clear their heads, Kadija served them herbal tea. Herbal tea which was, unbeknownst to the three of them, very generously laced with spice. Thankfully, Girlie the girl was given water – unlaced with anything remotely capable of causing unknown amounts of neuropathological damage.

“Mm…this tea is most invigorating,” Sergius commented.

“Yeah,” John replied happily. “It’s very…medicinal!”

“Right,” Serv muttered. Something in the tea tasted vaguely and disturbingly familiar. Oh no…

Before he could tell the others of his ghastly revelation, their hostess entered and graciously began talking about something or another in a language he couldn’t really comprehend. Maybe she was talking too fast, or maybe she was talking in Saracen-language. All he knew was that it would be rude to offend the lady by screaming out loud ‘our tea’s laced with even more hashish’ for everyone to hear. Instead, he just very politely asked their hostess: “Excuse me, ma’am.”

“Yes?” she asked inquisitively, like a tour guide eager to answer the questions of intrigued tourists.

“Is Hamid still in the hashish business?” Serv asked innocently.

“Oh, no!” the lady said dismissively. “He would never peddle such horrible stuff. Why, he only sells spice!”

For a second, Serv could only stare at her in wonder. But then he kicked himself in the shin, realizing how rude he was, But the lady didn’t really notice, as she continued her tirade about the glorious heritage of her noble family and how lucky Hamid was to escape from jail and marry her to escape the auto-excruciators, how expensive their wedding dowry was and how it nearly bankrupted her father who was in the business of beast-trading, and so on and so forth and etcetera.

“Ah, yes, that hammer there mounted on the wall was given to Hamid by his father, who I believe was a Kandar Saracen. Oh, no. Wait. I think he was Medinian. Or… was he from Arndarkar…was he an imam? No, that would make him wanted by the Teknofabrikatus…” Kadija pondered for a moment before deciding that it wasn’t worth it. “Anyway, that hammer was given to Hamid by his father when Hamid went to fight the Great War. His father said ‘if you get captured by the Connoltian infidels, you might want to take your own life’ and he gave Hamid the hammer. Praise be the Prophet that Hamid is not with seventy-two virgins right now!”

John, despite not comprehending anything she said, laughed – snorting tea out of his nostrils. It didn’t really sound that funny, but she sounded funny.

Sergius, always open-minded regarding other faiths, listened on intently and nodded politely.

Serv too did the polite thing and nod, faking an amused look. He could tell the lady very much enjoyed their company. But she wouldn’t be enjoying it any longer though, as loud thudding noises came from the very barricaded door behind him. She shrieked and disappeared before anyone could blink.

There was a muffled voice from the other side, it had an accent – definitely cowboy. “Ya’ll yokels are all under arrest by tha’ authoritah’ of the Teknofabrikato’. There ain’t nowhere t’run, y’hear! Give yourselves up before we ventilate you proper!”

Another voice with a different accent said: “Oi! Listen up, mates. We just want the fugitives, we don’t want to bring you no harm!” There was some hushed noises and rattling chain mail, and then the voice continued: “Crikey! Ai’ght, let’s break this door down and wrangle ‘em blokes!”



Serv, John and Serge looked at each other in a microsecond of total understanding.

And then they ran.

The Chase


The doors of Hamid’s garage exploded outwards and flying through the ensuing cloud of dust and machine-parts was a very ugly, very broken down, very rusted and very fast dune buggy decorated with a vintage quadgun and with three very intoxicated men and one very frightened little girl named Girlie riding on it.

The buggy skidded on sandy cobblestone, threatening to topple over and crush its passengers in a most anticlimactic death scene imaginable. As metallic bits and pieces flew off the confounded thing’s chassis, Serv screamed and turned the steering wheel around like a madman while vigorously shifting the gearshifts and half-dozen clutches beside his seat while also cursing with his multilingual lexicon of profanity. Grinding sounds came from the vehicle’s engine as black smoke and charcoal-bits erupted out of its exhaust pipes in a most dramatic fashion.

There was a brief moment of non-motion. John, who was at the backseat nearest to the quadgun, screamed. Serge, on the passenger seat with Girlie, started praying. Serv, who was at the driver seat surrounded by half a dozen clutches and speedometers and dials and plugs and lights and electroconfabulated techno doodads and switches, started cursing madly and began punching the dashboard. “Work, damn you! Work!”

At this not-so-sensible sight, innocent bystanders – spice merchants and slave traders and spice traders and slave spicers and grotesque deformutaloided womenfolk and even a small bunch of normal humanoid beings holding reptilians on leashes – stared.

Girlie the girl asked the three adults in a very innocent manner: “What’s happening?”

At this, all three of them stared at her in disbelief, unable to give any semblance of rational explanation whatsoever.

But they didn’t have to. For answering Girlie’s question was a squawking vulture-parrot mounted on the shoulder of a very angry turbaned Mussleman who angrily glared at them with an unflinching gaze of pure unadulterated anger. He was on a tricycle driven by a monacled midget on a leash with a Mohawk with a chain mail vest, and with him was a retinue of masculated monitor lizards and half-naked Musslemen armed with chainsaw yo-yos and swastika swordguns and speared swastika gunspears and all points in between. As the Musslemen retinue cried incomprehensibly and as the monitor lizards hissed viciously and as the vulture-parrot squawked loudly, the turbaned Mussleman with a flared boomstick angrily looked at them with an angry gaze of pure contempt.

The tricycle from hell came at them at them at speeds incomprehensible to the three of them’s intoxificated brains. And at this speed, the tricycle erupted through countless stalls and water melon vendors, raining deadly shrapnel upon the countless bystanders and killing all of them instantly.

And right behind the tricycle were hovercrafts manned by more village people, and flanking them were monocycles with cowboys inside them. There were at least two – no, fifty of them, John counted with his spice-intoxificinated brain that was suffering from serious concussions. But before he could scream, Serv’s relentless punching of the dashboard resuscitated the vehicle and sent it roaring away from the incomprehensible hell that encroached upon their sanity.

The sudden acceleration threw John from his seat and onto the car’s floor just as the village people on the hovercrafts started shooting at them. The midgets thwacked grenades at them with their slingshots and hurled high-explosive bolas at them with the sole intent of incapacitating them.

Serv saw all of this with his rearview mirror and he began to perform what he called ‘evasive action’, which involved trying his best to unintentionally throw Baylor out of the vehicle as the screaming man desperately grasped on the roll cage (or at least, it looked like a roll cage covered in brown stuff he assumed to be rust and dust) for dear life.

“Strap yourselves in!” Serv shouted as he sent the dune buggy through several shacks with people in them, thus exploding their finely polished windshield and nearly dislodging the wildebeest skeleskull ornamenting their vehicle’s hood. A bola missed them and wrapped itself around a stray lizard, causing it to explode in an explosion that killed and/or injured the fiends who were smoking spice with it.

As the reptilian exploded, Serge the missionary heeded the advice as if it came directly from his Maker. He quickly wrapped himself and Girlie with the seatbelts – which were a cacophony of chains and worn leather and wires. John too followed safety regulations and tried to plug his belt, but couldn’t find the plug to plug it in.

”There’s too much shit here!” John screamed. The backseat had at least a ton’s worth of junk – everything from cardboard boxes to metal crates to flashlights to carburetors to spark plugs to jumper cables to batteries to rum drums filled with both rum and ammunition to hollowed out rocket propelled grenades used as flower vases to radioshacks to obscene amounts of spice bags. He screamed, confabulated at the sight of things he couldn’t comprehend, and ripped off his seatbelt out of spite. He screamed: “Oh shit!”

“What?!” Serv asked, looking over his shoulder as the buggy plowed through a manure-hut.

“I ripped off my seatbelt!” John screamed some more. He held the torn piece of leatherchain up for all to see. “What. Is. This?!”

“Shut up!” Serv screamed back. He spun the wheel around and tore through a six-foot high picket fence adorned with broken glass, sending screaming and crying children running for safety. “Where are they?!”

“Who they?!” John shouted.

“The chain mail militia!”

John looked back and saw the trail of flattened huts and shacks and people they left behind. No village people, though. “I see nothing.”

“Good. We’re heading for outer Edrine!”

By flattening no less than ten inhabitations and, by John’s estimation, half the city’s population, they bypassed a series of roadblocks set up by the militia and entered the highway. According to Serv, the highway led to a bridge that led to an ancient gatehouse that led to the desert – which meant, for all points and purposes, home free.

Stomping on the accelerator so hard that part of the flooring caved in, Serv sent the buggy through the bridge, through the gatehouse, and towards the wild blue yonder.



“Home free!” Serv cheered, slamming his fists on the very-dented dashboard in elation. “Haha! Home free! Free home! Yippee-kay-yay motherfuckers!”

“Hooah!” John exclaimed, wiping the sweat off his shit-stained face. He got off the backseat and went behind the quadgun and made humping motions with his crotch in celebration.

“Praise be the Maker!” Sergius cheered. “Hallelujah! Thank you, Savior!”

“Yay!” Girlie cheered also. She got up and tried to imitate John, but Sergius stopped her.

At this, John laughed madly. And as John laughed madly, Serv tore his seat’s leather and used it for a bandana, for his dreadlocks were covering his face. He also used some cloth to bandage wounds on his elbows. He sighed, rested on the chair for a moment, and then drove on to the burning horizon. Overhead, the twin suns of Talambania cooked everything foolish enough to venture out of cover. It was midday, again. And they were out wandering in the desert. Again.

But this time they had a car.

As they cruised along and tried their best to not be cooked by the binary suns, they heard a very loud sound. Louder than a tricycle ridden on by certain unhappy people. Louder than the hoverfans of hovercraft filled to the brim with certain village people. Louder than the motors of monocycles straddled on by certain crotchless pantaloon-wearing cowpeople. It was coming from behind them, from Edrine – which, sadly, hadn’t disappeared under the forsaken horizon to never be seen or heard from again. And it was loud.

“Take a look!” Serv said loudly as he threw John a telescopic telescope. Not a pair of binoculars. Not a periscope. But an old-fashioned one-eyed telescopic telescope.

“Aye!” John said, eagerly extending the shaft and placing its end against his eye while talking like a buccaneer. “Arr…what do I see, matey? Avast! It be…oh shit!”

Indeed. For from the distance, with his one-eyed telescope, John could see a section of wall explode violently, collapsing upon itself. And from the dust, briefly suspended midair, was literally death itself.

At this sight, John screamed like a landlubbing woman afflicted with scurvy. Serv would later tell him that it was none other than a deathwagon, but for now, Serv merely asked him what it was.

“It’s big!” John cried out. “It’s got a spike-drill! And people with guns in its wheels! And it wants to kill us!”

“What?!” Serv asked. He adjusted the mirror and saw the cloud of smoke and dust coming at them. “Oh shit! These guys really want us! Those dicks! Those assholes! Those dick-hoe-pendejos!”

“What is it?!” John screeched, falling on his ass and looking around fearfully.

“It’s none other than a deathwagon,” Serv said. “Hang on tight. If it gets us, we’re all gonna die.”



From behind the destruction wreaked by the deathwagon of death came forth the tricycle. And behind it, in a delta formation, were monocycles and hovercraft piloted by the chain mail militia.

Sitting on the tricycle, flanked by his retinue of Musslemen and holding a leather leash that binded the Mohawked midget driver, was the angriest turbaned Mussleman of all of Talambania. He wore black robes with a sash of spiked chain mail, a bandolier of obscene weaponry, a crescent sword on his side. He had a beard that stuck to his angry face. And angrily, he had eyes that would angrily strike you with an unflinching gaze of undiluted anger beyond reason. His anger could not be emphasized enough as he clutched with his angry hands a flare-ended boomstick loaded with the most devastating weaponry in the chain mail militia’s combined arsenal.

He angrily gazed unflinchingly at the distance, surveying the quarry that made him so angry. He glared at them. Soon, they would feel his anger. His fury. His furious anger.

He pulled the chocker of his midget chauffer, nearly breaking its neck. The midget met his gaze and quivered in fear, and without saying anything, floored the accelerator.

They would catch up with the fugitives soon. And then, it would be to the auto-excruciators for them. And then he would be angrily furious with contentment, listening to their auto-excruciated screams. Soon, they would catch up with them.



“Serv, they’re gonna catch up on us soon!” John screamed.

“How could they have known?!” Serv growled. “No one saw us leave the jail! No one - oh, that fat fuck! He sold us out!”

“They’re gonna catch up on us soon!” John repeated. He was panicky flailing his arms in panic. “What are we gonna do?! What are we gonna do?!”

“The quadgun, Baylor!” Serv barked harshly. “Lock and load, you know what to do!”

“We’re all gonna die!” John cried as he got off the backseat and manned the quadgun. With a rusty squeak, he brought the guns to bear and cocked them, pulling the rusted lever and expending an ancient cartridge. He aimed the crosshair, braced himself for the inevitable recoil, and screamed the loudest scream in the history of loud screams.

As the flock of war engines neared it, machinegun fire ejaculated from the dune buggy’s rear. Hot lead zipped through the harsh roadless landscape, the badlands baked by the twin suns, and met the oncoming mongrels. Bullets pinged off the deathwagon’s mighty armour as its manned wheels drove it closer to its prey. Like the mouth of some primordial predatory beast, its spike-encrusted drill spun madly, crunching ground and pulverizing monocycles that foolishly veered in front of it into bloody clouds of blood.

As the fusillade of tracer fire incessantly dented its armour, it slowed down, allowing the monocycles and hovercrafts to pass by it.

At the sight of the deathwagon’s defeat, Baylor roared in victory as he clubbed his chest in triumph. “Hah! You think I’m afraid of you?! Who’s afraid now, huh?! I win!”

Then, as if spitefully responding to this in spite, leaping from the top compartments of the mighty deathwagon were sights so fearful that John’s cheers turned into whimpers.

Charging forward with inhuman speed and bellowing in a most frightening fashion were warboars. And straddling them were warpainted pygmies in chain mail. They screeched and furiously waved sharpened handgrenades tied to sticks. They came forth with such a speed that the monocycles and hovercraft were reduced to trailing behind them, and within seconds they were already upon the fleeing dune buggy.

“Shit!” John screamed. “I can’t aim down! They’re coming at us! They’re on us!”
Indeed, the pygmies leapt off their steeds and landed on the sides of the vehicle. They clawed forth with knives between their teeth, and they chittered viciously as they flashed their bulging yellow eyes and tooth-decayed teeth.

Serv threw Sergius a pistol. “You want to save her? You better start shooting! Baylor, there’s a machete there!”

“Where?!” John screeched as a screeching pygmy landed in front of him. It hissed viciously as John’s arms flailed around, desperately searching for the aforementioned machete. And as John did this, the pygmy leapt into the air, cartwheeling and spinning and landing behind him.

“It’s there somewhere!” Serv shouted.

The pygmy spat out its knife and clutched it with a tiny hand. But as he did so, John kicked it in the face and sent it flying off the vehicle. But in place of that pygmy, two more leapt onto the vehicle – they landed on the barrels of the quadgun and hissed viciously as they too spat out their knives.

They leapt towards Baylor, but before they could strike, the man pulled out a massive rust-coated blade and hacked the both of them. One pygmy’s flew off to the desert sky while the other lost an arm and incoherently rolled around at John’s feet.

As John waved his bloodied blade and roared triumphantly over his vanquished enemies, Serv and Sergius were confronted by yet another problem.

More pygmies. Clambered up the sides of the vehicle and tried to enter it. Sergius took out his cross-necklace, whispered a short prayer to the Maker, and kissed it. And then he cocked his pistol and let loose divine wrath upon the clambering creeplings while condemning their souls and declaring them: “Abominations! Abominations!”

Girlie closed her eyes as a pygmy made its way to the dashboard, crawling through broken glass that peeled off its abdomen. It hissed and brandished its blade, but before it could do anymore, Sergius punched it and it fell on Serv’s lap.

Serv screamed and, with one hand, threw it to the back of the car as yet another pygmy had its face exploded by Sergius’ sanctified sidearm. The sidearm clicked empty, and Sergius shouted: “My instrument of deliverance has expired! I need yet another instrument!”

“The glove compartment!” Serv shouted.

“Indeed!” Sergius exclaimed. He found a rusted wrench. And with the holy tool he caved in the faces of more encroaching spawnlings of evil. While he did so with one hand, he began sprinkling vials of holy water upon the faces of the hobgoblins. They screeched as the liquid began burning their unholy visages.

The horde of pigs ran besides the dune buggy. And upon seeing the unclean beasts, Sergius bit off the cap of another holy water bottle, banged it on the rollcage and threw it at them. It exploded upon landing, setting the unholy beasts ablaze.

“Hah!” John declared triumphantly. “No more little people! No more little people! Ha-ha!”

But before he could thump his chest in victory, the deathwagon came to view once more. And in a delta formation in front of it were hovercraft that picked up copious amounts of desert dust.

Once more, the quadgun ejaculated death upon the pursuers while they fired back. Those on the hovercraft growled angrily and shot back with shotguns and grenade launchers that ka-thunked explosive bolas and slingshot grenades and swordguns. But they were no match for the mighty ejaculation of John’s weapon, and the leading hovercraft exploded – sending bodies of chain mail-clad cowboys and midgets flying through the air.

Whizzing past the wreckage were the monocycles, and their cowboy drivers fired revolvers while twirling them and combing their hair with their fingers.

“Yeehaw!” one of them hollered as he combed his hair before getting exploded by quadgun fire.

“Ride ‘em cowboy!” John hollered back as he swung the rusted machinegun from one side to the other, spontaneously combusting many of the chasing cycles.

They were too fast though, and easily caught up with the buggy. The cowboys began discharging their weapons vigorously, rapid firing their pistolas with one hand while stroking their hair with another. Rounds began pinging off the buggy and, soon enough, John fell on his ass.

“Fuck! They shot my favorite shoe!” John screamed. His foot was bleeding. He stared at it dumbly and noticed something. “And my shoes don’t match!”

Serv pulled the steering wheel hard, causing the buggy to veer to the left and crush a pursuing monocycle. He then turned the wheel to the other side, and an incoming cycle from the right scraped the buggy’s side, causing an explosion of sparks and the decapitation of a cowboy’s foot. Serv stomped on the accelerator, crushed a cycle in front of them, and then tapped the brakes ever so slightly, causing one from the behind to kiss the buggy’s ass. He then floored it and continued on as Baylor got back to his feet. Or foot, rather.

The buggy nearly toppled over as the last hovercraft smashed its side. The midget passengers of the craft began shooting out blowdarts while its driver, a helmeted gaunt man in blue with aviator sunglasses, began shooting with his cobra-pistol.

“Baylor, do something!” Serv shouted as blue lightning splashed over the dashboard. One of the midgets on the hovercraft leaned forward and blew a dart that harmlessly imbedded itself on the side of Serv’s head, into his mane of dreadlocks. “Hah! That didn’t hurt, but this will!” he shouted as he violently grabbed the wrench from Sergius and threw it into the midget’s face – causing eyeballs and teeth to fly out. “More little people!”

John roared as he hurled the machete at the gaunt man in blue. The blade harmlessly imbedded itself on the man’s helmet, the impact causing the man’s aviator sunglasses to fall off. The man scowled and drew forth his cobra-pistol, wagging his index finger menacingly. But before he could fire, his face met the front end of a carburettor thrown by a very loudly screaming John Baylor whose legs and bleeding foot were buried in a heap of miscellaneous junked car parts. “Hah!”

In response to this, John’s gut was riddled by no less than a dozen blowdarts. He screamed in primal fury as, in a mixture of pain and animalistic rage, he got a toolbox and hurled its components at the vertically challenged antagonists. One had his eye imbedded by a screwdriver while another ate a box of nails and another one had a pair of pliers dig into his skull.

Taking this reprieve, John hurriedly removed the objects sticking out of his belly, screaming and cursing as he threw away each blood-stained dart at the dead midgets in spite. Growling, he once more manned the quadgun, preparing to utterly destroy the midget-infested hovercraft in spite. But much to his dismay, the rusted machinegun refused to move mid-turn. Alarmed, John screamed: “It’s stuck!”

“Then throw something, dammit!” Serv shouted back. This time, he had three darts sticking out of his dreadlocks.

“Avast!” John roared as he began throwing massive sacks of spice at the hovercraft, which was still dangerously close to them. Each bag exploded into clouds of red mist and the midgets began screeching in horror as the undiluted narcotic burned their eyes. The last bag was eaten by the craft’s hoverfan, which caused it to explode into a plume of magenta flame – causing the craft to veer out of control and eventually cease moving. The midgets disembarked the vehicle and began angrily flailing their arms at them while waving gunspears.

At this, John laughed. But before he could laugh a lot, he was silenced. For his gaze met that of the disgruntled turbaned Mussleman whose angry glare, despite a million miles away at John’s estimation, conveyed his angrily inhuman rage of furious furiousity through the million miles separating them. He glared, his emotionless face scowling and portraying only one emotion – that of angered contemptuous disgruntlement. He was, needless to say, very angry.

John gaped at the angry sight. For the angry Mussleman thumped his chest with one hand and, with his fingers, made an unhappy cutthroat gesture. He then looked to his sides as he placed his fingers on his forehead and then pointed at his quarry.

Answering the unspoken command the turbaned Mussleman angrily commanded out of spite, his retinue of half-naked Musslemen began pouring motor oil on their chests, rubbing it on themselves as they adorned themselves with oily patterns, war glyphs that signified their prey’s doom.

Then they took their chainsaw yo-yos and swatstika gunspears and straddled their reptilian steeds. Then, they disembarked the oversized tricycle in a glorious fashion reminiscent to those of Victorian equestrians. Midair, the reptilians shrieked with their forked tongues and gave a wild-eyed glare at their prey. And then, as they landed upon the harsh desert soil of Talambania’s badland frontier, they scuttled forth with an inhuman speed all but incomprehensible that of the reptilians of the known universe.

The scaly-legged serpent monsters came forth with frightening terminal velocity, filling the air with a bone-chilling wail that chilled bone and leaving in their wake clouds of dust. Under the harsh desert suns of Talambania, the oiled up chests of the twin Musslemen retinue gleamed menacingly like death itself.

Within seconds, the foremost lizard steed was already upon the dune buggy. The reptilian hissed voraciously as the Mussleman thrusted his swatstika-blade on a stick. It clanged against rusted steel, shattering bits of fibreglass and tearing through netting sown on the vehicle’s backside. The Mussleman, like his angry sheriff, glared at the stupidly dressed infidel at the backseat with a gaze of contemptuous contempt as he tried his best to stab him with his blade. He gritted his teeth and let out a snarl.

At this sight, this snarling motor oil-drenched Mussleman with an obscene weapon, John could only scream feebly as he struggled to defend himself. He threw exotic hashish smoking contraptions, gas masks, chains, pipes, ice picks, shovels, medical supplies, water bottles, flasks, canned food rations and the bones of long-dead vermin. But it was to no avail. For the Mussleman, in his oil-drenched fury, would not relent. Ever.

But all was not lost, for John’s feebly grasping arms feebly grasped a weapon. A stick, no, a net-bat of some obscene Saracen pastime wherein they swatted spheres decorated with the feathers of butchered vulture-parrots at each other in hashish-fueled rage. He clutched this weapon and met the swings of the Mussleman’s spearstika.

They duelled on as vehicle and reptilian raced through the desert at a hundred kilometres per hour, picking up a proverbial sandstorm of dusty sand. Blade met net and Damascus steel, clinging and clanging as the first sun began to set – casting melodramatic shadows upon the desert. John screamed in impotently incoherent fear while the Mussleman snarled in oil-drenched anger reminiscent of his angry boss, channeling fury incomprehensible to John into one, penultimate swing of his swatstispear.

But before he could decapitate the infidel, his spear was snagged on the net-bat. And with a mighty yell wherein John nearly wet himself, he swung the oiled up and half-naked combatant off his lizard and onto the desert floor. The Mussleman tumbled along with his reptilian stallion, but before long, they were exploded by the mighty spikedrill of an oncoming behemoth. The Death Wagon.

Bloody gibs and pieces and chunks of scaly entrails rained down upon the parched soil as the drill opened up like a vicious rotating flower of spikes. And in the middle of that rotating death-spike-drill-flower was a harpoon gun manned by an emaciated spice fiend in a gas mask. With a muffled squeal of spice-fueled manic euphoria, the gas-masked fiend discharged his mighty shaft – which sailed through the dusty air and impaled itself beside John, through the backseat, sending its sharpened tip into Sergius’ shoulder.

The holy man grunted in pain, but religious fervor shielded him.

“Are you okay?!” John asked, looking back.

“Indeed I am,” the holy man said in pained restraint, Girlie looking fearfully at his bleeding shoulder. She began sobbing, but Sergius placed her against his chest and comforted her. “But make sure those heathens burn in the fires of Perdition.”

And with that, John held up with both hands a mighty drum of bullets floating in the purest of rum. And as Sergius prayed the Angelus, John let out an incoherent warcry of rage that spanned every memory from the Constables raiding his burninated home-sweet-home to the mutilated corpses of men and womenfolk in the prisonship Charon IV to his former commanding officer who, on his honeymoon, he nearly claymored to death for some obscene reason to how he detonated a hydrotomic warhead on a glacier on some frostbitten armpit of the galaxy while wearing only what he wore now to the grotesque bucktoothed prostitute whose every inch of cackling metadeformutaloiditated organelles exuded sheer revulsion and spite at every corner of his scarred mind. Every one of these flabbergasting scenes of utter insanity that would leave lesser men mad flashed before his crazy-eyes as his unmusculated form hurled the barrel at the rota-volving spikedrill of the incoming deathwagon.

The drum exploded, showering the entire wagon of death with undiluted alchohol and fifty calibre bullets. And as the gas masked fiend ripped off his mask and cackled insanely, the rum and the bullets ignited – engulfing everything in purifying flame.

As the flaming death wagon burned, its wheels detached. The spiked hubcaps flew off, revealing them to be monocycles with even more cowboys in them, and as they veered off the burning death wagon, the rolling inferno ceased its pursuit and its flames were extinguished.

“I win!” Baylor exclaimed. “I am the greatest! I am…shit!”

But within seconds, something scuttled on top of the smoking vehicle and leapt into the air with a frightening wail. It was big, it was scaly, it was none other than the last of the reptilian steeds. On it was the last of the angry turbaned Mussleman’s retinue – half-naked and smeared in motor oil with war glyphs drawn on it. He snarled a wild-eyed snarl and waved around a massive disk attached to a chain. The disk whirred for it was a chainsaw, and the snarling Mussleman spun it wildly in incomprehensible rage.

At this sight, John screamed. Sergius, who was ripping off the harpoon, saw this too – and all he could do to prevent soiling his robes was to cross himself. And at this, the reptilian steed hissed viciously and from its neck erupted a massive frill of scales coloured very brightly.

Serv saw the midair lizard with his mirror, and he was scared shitless. Letting go of the wheel, he scrambled around and took the only semblance of weaponry he could find – a flare gun. He twisted around and fired at the frilled lizard, which was descending down upon them, its fangs glistening with bacterial saliva and its reptilian eyes exuding cold-blooded fury befitting its very angry Mussleman rider.

The burning bullet impacted the Mussleman’s oil-smeared torso and, after a brief and awkward moment suspended midair, exploded in a fiery blaze of burning motor oil. The Mussleman was immolated by his broiling chest and his lizard steed screeched in animalistic fury, flailing around as it fell to the ground.

Midair, the burning Mussleman on fire dismounted and, in a fiery rage that only made him angrier and burn faster, hurled his chainsaw yo-yo towards the escaping buggy. But before he could even hit the ground, the desert sand erupted and a creature, a hideous insectoid arachnid John identified from his memories of school textbooks as an ant lion, flew up into the air and caught the burning Mussleman with its spiked mandibles – bisecting the burning Mussleman into two and swallowing him whole as it slowly landed on the ground as if in slow-motion.

The ant lion disappeared into the harsh desert sand as if nothing happened. And rolling over the corpse of the burninated lizard in delta-formation were the deathwagon’s monocycle-wheels. Cobra-pistols shot out a fusillade of blue lightning, causing bits of the buggy to catch fire, while revolvers spewed out hot lead that ricocheted off the buggy back towards their shooters – causing an unfortunate few to fall off their cycles and get run over by a very big and very rapidly approaching tricycle.



The very rapidly approaching tricycle’s crew was now dwindled to only three. The Mohawk midget with a monocle and noserings and a chain mail vest with a leashed collar, the red-black and yellow vulture-parrot with a cybernetic wing of black steel and the angriest turbaned Mussleman on all of Talambania, whose anger could not be emphasized enough. At the loss of his retinue of oily lizard-riding Musslemen, his angry visage of pure unadulterated anger scowled in a look of pure angrily undiluted contempt. His furiously unflinching gaze of unreasoning rage stared unblinkingly at the escaping dune buggy, staring at it with unblinking fury – a sheer unending disgruntled angerment that was unequalled in its incomprehensible anger. He was very angry. And, in silent anger, he held his flared boomstick angrily.

He tugged the midget’s leash, nearly decapitating it in anger. Taking the cue, the midget stomped on the accelerator with both its tiny feet – causing the tricycle to go at such a speed that it mashed all the monocycles in its way, causing cowboys to fall off and roll on the desert sand with their crotchless pantaloons.

Paying no heed to this, the angry turbaned Mussleman disgruntledly shouldered his boomstick, lined up the sights and squeezed the trigger. There was a mighty boom as fire belched out of his mighty boomstick, his instrument of anger that was armed with only the most devastating ordnance in the chain mail militia’s combined arsenal, and then –



“Serv!” John cried out. “They’re shooting snakes at us!”

“What?!” Serv asked in pure surprise, nearly sending the buggy crashing as he turned to look at the crazy man backseat in disbelief. But before he could even muster the slightest iota of comprehension, something long and scaly hissed past him with frightening velocity, landing beside their dune buggy and exploding into a massive fireball. “What the fuck was that?!”

Another hissing projectile whizzed past his head. Midway, it actually tried to bite him! It landed harmlessly in front of the buggy and exploded violently before he could even look at it.

“Serpents!” Sergius cried out in alarm. “They have serpents!”

“What?! What the-” Serv sputtered incomprehensibly. But before he could finish, another one hissed past him, grazing the side of his arm before airbursting. “It bit me! It fucking bit me! What the fuck?!”

There was yet another explosion, and together, all of them started screaming.

Soon, they were bathed in a rain of fire and shrapnel as the aforementioned snakebullets detonated all over – hissing past them and exploding up above, down below, to the left and to the right. Soon, the desert was replaced in a massive cloud of dust and smoke and flying exploding snakes, and with every explosion, all of them screamed as loud as humanly possible.


“I don’t want to die!” Girlie screamed, tears streaking down her eyes. “Father Serge, I just want to go home! I don’t want to die!”

Sergius looked at the girl; saw her teary eyes as she began sobbing on his shoulder. He closed his eyes and sighed, mustering all the strength he could. Never had he imagined that in his decades of ministering he would end in a situation such as this. Never did he imagine confronting such challenges. The monasteries of the Ordo Immaculada never prepared him for this, teaching him only the ritualized practices that ultimately proved useless at times like these. However, the two most important things taught to him by the Diocese were faith and courage. Faith in the Maker and the courage to act when faith alone was not sufficient to prove oneself to the Maker, when faith alone was not sufficient to overcome adversity. Indeed, the Maker had asked much of him – and he would not be found wanting.

“Grant me strength,” he whispered as he opened his eyes in newfound resolve. He stood up and gazed at the incoming Mussleman not with anger, but with serenity only the divine could bestow.

Their eyes met as sand whipped Sergius’ robes and his face, but the perverse elements would not deter him, for he was steadfast in his resolve. He gritted his teeth, for he was about to make a great sacrifice. He held his crucifix one last time and placed it against his forehead. He kissed it, and then ripped it off.

“Blessed are those who find serenity, for the Maker shall be with them!” he cried out. And then, with a strength summoned only for the most dire of circumstances, he threw the silver crucifix with all his might, praying for the Maker to guide his aim.

For the briefest of moments, the silver crucifix gleamed with the purest of light, despite the harsh storm of sand. It sailed through the air, its aim true, and it impaled itself into the mouth of the Mohawked monacled midget on a leash. The perverse creature screeched as smoke and blood began billowing from its mouth, and as it flailed its tiny arms, the tricycle spun wildly out of control, disappearing into the maelstrom of dust and sand before exploding.



Sergius collapsed to his knees and fell back to his chair. And as John cheered a final hoorah, congratulating the holy man for his awesomeness, Sergius closed his eyes and serenely said to Girlie: “The bad men are gone, my child.”

“Aw, shit!” John cursed in alarm. “The guy needs medical attention! He’s in shock”

“Don’t worry, we’re almost there!” Serv said confidently, gritting his teeth as he floored the accelerator. “The storm’s clearing up, we’re nearing the canyons!”

“And what’s at the canyons?!”

“Samarkan, my friend,” Serv said. “Samarkan.”