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Angel Wings Chapter 6: The Over-Idealised Contrivances of Mary Sue’s Schizophrenic Younger Brother
Posted By: Neil Yudsponwy<mark_price@hotmail.co.uk>
Date: 3 September 2008, 7:45 pm


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      "Or." I scan my eyes over the four deadbeats now cluttering up my lounge, and continue my toilet-inspired infiltration hypothesis of the Valhalla that could easily be applied to my own Leech infestation.
      "You could have someone on the inside, a mole for instance that could fill you in with the details; give you information on whether the ship construct is male or female and on what sort of defences the ship has."
      I call out Connie's name and at the sound of it, she releases an orgasmic whimper. Any sense of command over the ship's defence system is gone, along with any other task I had in mind –like cooking me some damn food.
      Her groans of delight leave me in no doubt as to how they've managed to suppress her without hitting on the manual override; which is usually a three key password that typically disarms most ex-service Constructs.
      "Sex." I ruefully breeze. "Figures." I add as an afterthought.
      Constructs are, after all, human-designed and suffer all of our sins for the emergence of their artificial intelligence.
      I'd deliberately kept Connie away from the more sordid end of the human spectrum of depravity, but it seems these guys know just which buttons to press.

      The guy nearest my workstation does the meanest look he can manage holding a large gun-shaped remote control in his right hand and flipping something into the air with the other.
      "Don't let us stop you." He mews, brutally emphasizing his last word like a bad speech disorder.
      I further my theory, originally based on the Spartan infiltration of the Valhalla, but now piecing together my own cocky downfall.
      "Then you get into position and use a decoy to distract your prey while simultaneously detaching from the decoy and latching onto the prey."
      I think of the 'clumsy' pilot lining up to the Hell's Kitchen docking bay of the Paragon, and how I'd fell for it hook, line and sinker, all the while these four bastards were busy biting chunks out of my beloved Aspis with their Leech pods. I'd even laughed at the assmole technician on the Paragon, showcasing him my ship's automated defences, thinking he was the fool; and yet all this time, he was feeding information to these schmoes about how to defile my Connie.

      The lame juggling act carries on flipping and smiling through black and broken teeth.
      I carry on talking, hoping that something will click in the back of my mind and I can turn the tables.
      "The decoy could be something innocuous, say… an exchange of paint jobs; maybe trundle out the old rookie pilot line to make it seem more authentic."

      Behind flipper and over by my suit, with his greaseball head cocked at right angles and his massive shoulders slumped forward –cradling a mini-gun, the sweaty pal chimes in with a helpful comment.
      "Worked on you, dudn't it?"
Directly over the top of the muscle-bound dunce's head, I see the Symbion suit's last red light flickering slowly, meaning it's dangerously close to full power.
      Meaning there's hope.
      Meaning greaseball is dangerously close to having his head snapped into the correct posture –or maybe just snapped if I think he has nothing to offer.
      "Then you bide your time." I say, aware that a chance may come.
      "Waiting for the right moment; waiting to be vomited from your capsules. You sit, stewing in your shit and piss-filled colostomy bags, waiting for the occupant to answer nature's call with a trip to a real toilet. Not that you shit-heels would know anything about them of course, but they're a modern phenomena you might want to research."
      I wrinkle my nose and take a whiff of the deadbeat in front of me.
      "And then you strike, popping out your capsules like smelly little turds to say–"

      "Hi." The smelly little turd cleverly orchestrates his interruption. "We're you're local friendly pirates, and you my little mutant hombre." He stops his flipping for a second and smiles, pointing his index and forefingers to the temple.
      "You're shit out of luck."

      "I guess you never thought it would happen to you though, huh?" The repugnant smoker grunts ironically, sitting in my seat with his boots up on the console, stinking up my cockpit.

      I spy what flipper carries on tossing into the air as he walks towards me, it's the data stick from the console and has the siege of the Valhalla on it.
      "Like I said." My eyes follow its looping trajectory. "I was distracted."

      "I wouldn't worry about it too much, chum."
      Flipper slides a creepy arm around my waist, breathing his shit-breathe all over me like we're bosom buddies –casually groping for any guns in my waistline.
      "Just think of us as neighbourhood watch s'all, here to look out for you."
      Again, like some speech anomaly, he goes up in tone for the last word.
      Flipper's clearly suffering from some kind of halitosis-induced brain rot, causing the brain-eroded victim to add unnecessary emphasis to the end of his sentences.
      "You're scum." I blurt out with a sickly acid taste invading the back of my throat. "It was the piss-stains and shit-stinking hobo look that gave you away."
      Flipper does me a favour and removes his arm, he shuts his trap and backs off a few yards.

      "Now that's not a nice thing to say to kindly folk that just dropped in."
      He throws the gun-remote on the workstation and comes back around swinging.
      The blow is enough to turn my head and draw blood but I shrug it off without a second thought. Flipper should practice his timing, maybe put more into the twist.
      "Least you could have done is baked us a welcome cake." He bellows before gurning around at his laughing pals. Like this same old same old schtick is as fresh as the day they found it in a fortune cookie.
      I keep one eye on the Symbion's amateur light show, seven of the red LEDs are motionless, staring out unphased while the last one counts ever closer to the show's finale.
      The suit's got a hush hush joke with a real stinging punchline that's gonna knock em dead.

      Connie gives out another sigh of unadulterated pleasure. Try as she might, the virus is like electronically-engineered chocolate, stimulating her every thought and persuading her that nothing but the complete smothering of her neural centre with this icky stuff matters.
      I blame myself, I should have introduced her to these sensations long ago but for the life on me I just wanted to shield her away from them, like a strict father to his only child. Now look what my prudish thinking has wrought upon us.

      Flipper bolts upright and grabs his remote from off my workstation, all stern and puffing out his chest.
      "Okay, cripple-king, let's get down to business. I'm gonna need fingerprints and DNA."
      He pulls my arms down and flattens them against the side of his remote. What feels like an electric shock goes along my little finger and up my arm.
      "A hair sample." The bastard yanks on a tuft of hair and feeds it into the end of his box of tricks.
      He looks me over, squints down one eye and puts his hand out in front of his chest, waggling his little finger and pointing towards my groin.
      "You're not one of those kinky kind of mutants are you, that go in for extra levels of ship secureetay?"
      "That won't be necessary." I smile, giving relief all round.
      Unfortunately, he gives me a different sort of grin, the licentious sort that says he's gone that extra mile in the past: all in the call of duty.
      "You sure?" He says, baring discoloured incisors and still adding height to that last word.
      I do what I hope is the only hard swallow of the night and curse my luck. The only pirates capable of penetrating my ship's defences just so happen to be rapists that want to penetrate my defences.
      I take their laughter personal while the Symbion's light show seems to be taking forever.
      It carries on winking in my direction.

      Flipper dries up his donkey laugh and continues mocking me. I can feel blood vessels exploding in my forehead.
      "Lighten up fella, you're insured so we're just going to drop you off on Io and skedaddle with your ship, okay homie?"
      Since Io's still going through the atmosphere building stages, it's not a place anyone who isn't associated with the project wants to be right now. So either he's pulling my leg or they really don't intend to stop in order to drop me off.

      The Symbion's last light stops blinking and all eight eyes roar into life; I feel like I've just won the Milky Way Lottery.
      "That's not happening." I retaliate, ready to play my trump card.
      "We're not dicking around here, pal." Comes the angry response. "Give us what we want and we'll go away."

      I skim my eyes over the deadbeats, each one of them staring back. The flipper suffering from halitosis is the first to look away, rolling his head to one side.
      "Whatever, let's just dump him on Europa without a coat and he can freeze to death for having such a bad attitood."
      I take a step towards him and his goons raise their guns as fast as weary arms allow.
      "I think you guys are cranky from being cooped up in those tiny capsules all that time. My Construct was just about to make dinner, if you release her, she'll fix you up something real nice."

      Flipper Hal nods towards the rejection letter on the wall, like he's on a game show and has insider knowledge, clued in to what is exactly behind door number 7.
      "I don't like bullet-turret sandwiches, thanks." He lifts his shirt, as he so often probably does, and shows me what looks like an appendix scar.
      "Tried one once and it disagreed with me." Everyone laughs and the guns slowly but surely go down by their sides.
      "I tell you what then." I smile appeasingly. "Since you guys look tired." I initiate remote control of the Symbion and order it to pull the False Gravity switch.
      "Why don't you take a load off…"

      With a sudden jerk, we all go bobbing in the air as gunfire pings around my ship.
      "…And let my masseuse introduce you to some aches and pains, relieving you the burden of existence!"
      Greaseball's legs fly up from underneath him and as he floats up, struggling to get his bearings, the stationary shell winds a right arm around his neck and pulls him in.
      "Hrrk!" Is all he can manage as the grip tightens and crushes every bone in the arm's path; his body losing all interest in that little mini-gun he was cradling.

      As the sweaty corpse begins to hover, the Symbion does a quick change; pulling the legs in together and flipping them out behind it to act as a tail; the spurs becoming a lethal barb. The shoulders collapse into the back with the elbows flexing in. Going prone, it lands upon the eight reflexive spikes and magnetises them to the floor, giving it advantage over my uninvited bobbing guests.
      They float. We all float in here but the master.
      The Symbion thrusts the arms out in front and begins snapping them in the air like the pincers of a scorpion.
      Atop of the giant beast, eight red eyes spill out their deathly gaze.
      Excitedly, I scoop up the blood from off my lip with my finger and suckle the red stuff into my mouth, like a spider cleaning its fangs before tucking into the main course.
      "Step into my parlour, said the black scorpion to the hapless, floundering pirates."
      Sporting a devilish grin and floating on cloud nine, I think it's time to show these deadbeats a real 'puncture-line'…





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