“Don’t rightly think I can, Jet. Why, you want a hand job? Ha ha.”
“Would you knock of the hillbilly shit?” I gave a sigh of impatience.
Blest started to slip back into his delirium. Drool dripped from his lips. His head lolled.
“Snap out of it! For Christ sake, Blest. No time to die yet.”
“Wh-what?” he grunted. “Go away. Fuck off, Jet, I want to sleep.”
“Plenty of time to sleep in your damn tank, dumbo. Listen to me—”
“I told you to bug the fuck off, Rusco.”
“Listen!” In a fit of sudden anger I focused the brunt of my frustration at him and there came a sudden zing, like an instrument popping strings. Blest’s head jerked back then he snapped alert with a sharp cry. “What the hell was that? Rusco, you don’t have to get sore. Stop chucking things my way.”
As my eyes darted around, I was as startled as he. I shook my head. This chamber was booby-trapped, beyond a house of horrors.
I turned my focus toward Zan, who seem to have roused from his painful hangman’s hell. He hung up in the rafters, dangling from the beam. “Zan, talk to me,” I hissed.
As Zan twirled, his one skewed eye bulged my way, blasted me with a look of despair. “D-did I ever tell you how I made it to Othwan, Jet?”
“Think you did.”
“Nah, the real story.” He winced and took bite-sized breaths as he hung from those cords knitted in his back. I empathized with such pain, like a pork loin dangling from a butcher’s hook.
“We were on an attack ship. Mong ordered me to blast the small ship that my mother and father were escaping on.”
I closed my eyes and looked away.
“Yeah, that bad, Rusco…Well, Mong—basically, he killed my family, my brother and sister. The man has means…technology, influence, black magic.”
Zan was preaching to the choir. I’d witnessed too many bouts of Mong’s black magic. But I needed to keep Zan talking, engaged in the present, if he were to be of any use, which at the moment, didn’t look likely. “How’d you get that scar under your eye, Zan? What happened?”
Zan snorted, grimacing. “Mong’s guards cut me to make an example of me.”
“What’d they do that for?”
“I violated the bell rules.”
“Really?”
“When the bell rings…we’re all supposed to…assemble for teachings. I was a little slow.”
“Got us all jumping like trained seals.”
“Seems so.” Zan’s face curled in anguish. “What about you, Blest?” Zan croaked. “Seems you’ve dropped out of the—conversation. Nothing more to say about Rog and his sexy robot?”
“Forget Blest,” I grunted. “He’s out of—”
“Quiet. Someone’s coming,” Zan hissed.
There came a clinking at the door. Hinges creaked and Balt, the sick fuck, came in, carrying a large bowl, which might have held food.
“Dinner anyone?” Balt called, sauntering forth with a breezy chuckle. “Oh, I see you’re occupied. I’ll just leave these fine treats here on the bug tank. Fresh owl gizzards, chicken liver, raw snail. Mmm-mmm. Whole bowl of it. Prepared raw for maximum protein.”
“Why don’t you try some yourself, Balt?” I suggested. “Mong’s prayer circle always emphasizes sharing and goodwill.”
“That’s true and mighty kind of you, Rusco, but I’ll pass on the victuals. My stomach’s a little off today. I’ll stop by for a little chat though.”
“Mighty neighborly of you.”
Balt frowned. “Those thongs look infected, Vulder. Think the skin on your back can handle it? Might rip off more of your shoulder.”
“We’re all getting used to it by now, Zan included,” I broke in, hoping to cut Zan off and stop Balt from getting riled up.
Balt huffed out a grunt. “No fun here, Rusco, this is boring. Think I’ll be on my way now. Good luck, kiddos.”
He left, closing the portal behind him with a loud thud.
“Fucker.” I pinched my eyes shut with a sigh. “Where were we?”
“Ready to die, Rusco, what else?” Zan gave a horrible groan. “Let’s lay off the chatty Cathy stuff. I’m dying over here.”
“Listen, we can defeat this Star Barf. We have to—”
“What? Scream a little louder?”
“Listen, Zan. Blest, you too. Dammit. Let’s dig in our heels here. We can beat this fucker if we cooperate. But if we whine and grouse about it we’re toast. There’s three of us, plus these ugly bugs in the tanks, that makes five.”
“Now you’re—the one’s sounding—like a lunatic,” Zan croaked.
I gave a hiss of exasperation. “Blest, are you with me? Blest?”
Blest had slipped off into some lotus land. His head jerked up with a jolt.
“Rusco, I had the most brutal, fucked up dream.”
“Another?”
“They come at me a mile a minute.”
“Lucky you. Must be the fluid in the tanks.”
“You think? This one was of me drowning in a swimming pool. Bugs—fishes—they all were nibbling at my toes, eyes, arms, legs, taking bites out of my ribs…except it was no dream, Rusco, it was real, and my buddy Rog and the rest of them were all bagged up in that tin can of a space capsule on a training mission. They’d crashed-landed. There was nothing whole left of them when the rescue unit came after they’d washed up on the shore, capsule and all, Rusco. In the middle of nowhere. Damn it, that really happened! Rusco, are you listening? Don’t look at me like that. They all died in that crash. It’s in the report. They found the ship crumpled up on Maelstrom’s beach. Rog, Ven, Peri and Noose. Should have been me. Earlier when our ship was cracking up, we drew straws to see who’d live. I got the lucky straw, took the single chute, there was only one left after the explosion.
He shook and shivered like a man suffering from dengue fever.
