Realignment

Cheyenne rambled on about power surges over the coms but everyone on the bridge had fallen silent. They were all slowly processing what had just occurred. Piebeard fell to his newly reconnected knees and his head sank low. His spiritless body was supported only by Ubermilf’s leg. She patted his head as reassuringly as she could, while wiping a tear from the corner of her eye.

“So you see, Captain,” Cheyenne continued, “we’re really no worse for the wear. How would you like to…”

Ubermilf cut him off.

“Cheyenne, report to the bridge immediately.”

He protested “But the engines are…”

“NOW, Cheyenne!”

He did not protest this time he simply said, “yes ma’am” and headed for the bridge.

--

Cheyenne arrived on the bridge to find everyone silent and staring either at the captain’s chair or at nothing in particular. He walked over to Lieutenant Milf, Piebeard still heaped at her side.

“Ma’am, what’s going on? Where’s Captain Beefheart?”

She pointed to the scorch marks that permeated the captain’s chair.

“Oh. Oh God. The personnel shield fluctuations I was reading, they were his. What are we going to do?”

WhiteBoyBob stepped up, priming Stella.

“Right, while I think that decision is up to the new Captain, I vote for a sweeping, blood drenched, violent revenge.”

The meek ensign Pereira broke his usual typical silence by asking a question that was weighing heavy on everyone’s minds.

“New captain?”

Piebeard rose to his feet as everyone was now looking at him. Wiping the blood and grime from his face he looked into the eyes of everyone on the bridge. He met the gaze of Lieutenant Ubermilf, paused for a moment and then spoke.

“What are your orders, Captain?”

Pie and Milf stared stoically at each other for what seemed like an eternity and then slowly she nodded.

“Right, listen up everyone. There will be time to mourn Beefheart later, right now we need to concentrate on staying alive and getting the ship fixed. Cheyenne you get back down to engineering and you and Franklin get this boat moving as close to full speed as possible. Owl, you get on the long-range coms and find us a port not under Church control where we can drop anchor for a few days. Tao I need you to hack into the Church’s mainframe and download any and all documentation you can find on The Vatican II and get some clothes for the love of Christ. Chris you’ve got the helm, be prepared to steer us out of here at any moment. Lieutenant Pereira, you start the security checks and begin plotting our course…”

Everyone paused and looked at Anthony when she said this, he in turn was staring at Captain Ubermilf with a confused look on his face.

“We’ll have time for the promotion ceremony later, right now I need everyone to get their ass’ in gear!”

Everyone jumped right back into what they were doing. Including the new captain.

“Piebeard, you have the bridge. Bob you’re with me.” With that she took off towards the rear of the ship with WBB in tow.

--

While she and Bob were making their way to storage area of the ship, she began talking to Bob.

“Something occurred to me a little while ago.”

“Wotzat?” Bob replied

“You have a ship, don’t you?”

“Course I have a ship. A damn fine one too.”

“Take me to it. Now.” Ubermilf ordered.

After a bit more walking they entered the hangar and Ubermilf stopped in her tracks. What she was gazing on was more than a ship it was a thing of beauty. It was a one-seated death machine with a cherry on top.

“My god…” she gasped
“Allo luv.” Bob said as he stroked the ship.

Ubermilf regained her composure and began again.

“Spec it out for me Bob, I want all the details.”

With a grin Bob began, “what you see before you, Captain, is a Barracuda Class Destructor called The Doom Bringer. I have had the weapons all converted over to Ion-Plasma, with a good old-fashioned 20mm Vulcan cannon mounted below the cockpit, I have had the whole ship remolded with Gargattian Blood Steel so it can withstand quantum +6 travel…

“Quantum PLUS six?!” Ubermilf interjected

“Aye, it comes equipped with a cloaking device and an autopilot that works on a series of voice commands. Watch: cloak” - as he spoke the words the ship began to mercurially meld into the hangar “Bob spoke: On” though Übermilf didn’t hear anything she could see the exhaust from the engines make everything hazy.

“Impressive” She said.

Bob shut off of the cloaking device and engines and ushered Ubermilf to the rear of the ship. He raised the paneling on the side to reveal the quantum drive. The sleek silver and black lines of the drive were contrasted by the big red letters emblazoned on the front that read MOPAR.

“This is going to be perfect.” Ubermilf said “Your mission is a dangerous one, Bob, but I have faith that in your, ahem, capable hands it will be no problem. I need you to scout out ahead of us, I’ll have Anthony send the coordinates to your system right away but I need you to make sure the path is clear and that we will have a place to lay low when we get there.”

“Aye, luv. “ Bob strapped Stella into the cockpit and jumped in. Within seconds he was outside the airlock traveling parallel to The Beefheart. Ubermilf went back to the bridge and supplied the crew the details of Bob’s mission.

“Owl – have you found a passable star port yet?” She inquired

“I have, but you are not going to like it…” his voice quivered as he thumbed his med pack.

“What do you mean? Which port is it?”

Owl paused for a moment, fearing to speak. He rapidly pumped meds into his system

Ubermilf got stern this time “Owl…”

“It’s” Owl cringed as he said the name “The L.M.L.”

Ubermilf winced a bit, trying not to telegraph her reaction to the crew. Not being entirely successful Anthony spoke up.

“What does that mean?”

Ubermilf grimaced as she responded, “It means we’ve got to deal with Hex and The Ink Slinger, and that never ends well.”

Reel Ten

Beefheart rolled his eyes and sighed deeply in an exagerated attempt at nonchalence, while Piebeard's console glowed a lurid mauve and in a breathy, porn star voice announced, "Danger, Seaman Piebeard incapacitated! ...mmmmm.... releasing nanobots.....now.......ooohhh...!"

The purple haze of glowing nanobots dispersed from their holding pattern around Piebeards seat and swarmed towards his unconcious form. Though battle hardened, each of the bridge crew studied his or her own console with a furious intensity and fought as a man to hold down their breakfasts as Piebeard's legs - suffused with the deep red glow of the nanobot cloud - straightened themselves. Bones crunched back into place and tendons squealed and grew together as the unfortunate pirate's knees returned to a more conventional configuration.

"...Mmmm..." came a muffled moan from beneath the main view screen, "...dat's nice....fank'ou very much...." Piebeard grinned with a blissful expression as he was pumped full of the finest digitally produced narcotics in the galaxy.

Moments later, having completed their repairs, the nanobots abruptly reversed the effects of their pharmaceutical diversion and dispersed in a puff of blue light, leaving a confused and rudely awakened pirate attempting to conceal an embarassingly obvious erection accompanied by a faint smell of lavender.

"Ah, Piebeard reporting for duty, sir", blustered Piebeard as he threw himself into his seat and slid it as far as possible under his workstation.

"So I see," smirked Beefheart.

Suddenly, his face fell and he gestured frantically at the screen, barking: "Ensign Perreira! What the fuck's that?!"

All eyes rolled toward the main screen, and more specifically towards the fleet of Papal Gunships massed around Port Salut. Bristling with neo-Gothic armoury of deceptively destructive force, each black and red monstrosity held enough ordnance to flip a small continent on its head and more hypernuclear firepower than a thousand gun-running, tramp-steamer, pirate ships. Ordinary, run of the mill, bog standard pirate ships that is, but the Beefheart was something special.

No other ship had had installed the Mechanics Guild's prototype Zen Gun, the ultimate in reciprocal firepower and, since Mike & The Mechanics' sudden demise at the hands of Caruthers and his band of child molesting, ultra-orthadox, money-lending neomonks - the fearsome "Tally Band" - no one ever would.

"Cheyenne!" screamed Beefheart. "Engage the Zen Gun!"

"Aye, cap'n!" whooped Cheyenne, and pouncing upon the artfully fashioned, retro eight-track stereo styled weapons console, slid all sixteen tone controls up to 11. All aboard the Beefheart, time slowed to a point and stopped, while motion seemed to continue as events happened on top of each other, appearing and disappearing simultaneously, light slopping around like a pool of cooled mercury.

Meanwhile, amidst the gloomy clouds of red, dully glowing steam on the bridge of the Papal Flagship, Cardinal Rensburg took a final hit of incense from his antique solid silver hookah, rolled his eyes back to reveal what would normally have been a man's whites, and murmured from between ranks of yellowed, tombstone teeth, a husky: "...Kill them..."

In an instant, the thousand strong fleet unloaded the might of its entire arsenal against The Beefheart, only to be met quite unexpectedly with the hitherto unforeseen passive aggressive force of the Zen Gun. As cannon blazed, the fleet's finest were assaulted by an equal but opposite force; the harder they tried, the more of a hammering they took until finally their collective shields failed and they imploded in a clump of super dense plasma.

Watching from within the discretely distant confines of his weekend flagship, Vatican II, Pope Danzig XVII ground his cigar butt into the head of a quivering altar boy respectfully holding the Papal Ash Tray at His Emminence's elbow. Raising the Papal Chalice to his gritted teeth and slurping a mouthful of milky white fluid he snarled, "Disappointed."

A moment later he flung his silk robed arm into the air, then brought the chalice crashing down upon the trembling acolyte's head, screaming again: "DISAPPOINTED...!!!"

As the pope gasped and gesticulated wildly for his chalice to be refilled, cardinals dashed forward to haul the recently deceased servant's carcass away, frantically stuffing it into an already overflowing cupboard whilst simultaneously thrusting a quivering, nonplussed youth forward to take it's place.

"Engineering to bridge, cap'n. Minor damage sustained in all quarters, small fires on decks 2 and 3 but hull integrity maintained." Cheyenne wafted the smoke from burning macadamia nuts away from his nose and squinted into the Jeffries tube on engineering sub-level1. "A few shorts here and there, but nothing major."

"Good man," coughed Beefheart, surprised at how weak his own voice sounded over the ringing in his ears. He was even more surprised to see the faces of his bridge crew staring at him in disbelief before disappearing through a bulkhead, rapidly followed by the rest of his ship. Moments later Beefheart found himself staring perplexedly at the stern of his own ship as it shrank to a small bright dot amongst the zillion other small bright dots suddenly surrounding him on all sides and, he discovered with a start, above and below him. Especially below him.

Aboard the USS Beefheart, Milf stared dumbfounded at the smoking, slightly greasy space on the captain's chair so recently occupied by Beefheart himself. "A few sparks here and there," continued Cheyenne over the intercom "but I don't think we lost anything critical. At least 99.7% integrity on all personnel shields during assault which is pretty good for a first shot at it, I reckon."

Void. Silent nothingness. So this is it, thought Beefheart. This is what we spend our whole life avoiding. This is what having a pension is supposed to make go away, is it? Panic swept through him and he screamed a soundless, angst ridden scream. He screamed until he would have been sore, but realised that not only could he not hear himself, he couldn't feel anything either. It made no difference to him now if he screamed or not because there was no one here to hear him do it. Himself included.

Yes, he realised, finally unfettered of any obligation to inhabit that fleshy encumberence he so recently had considered to be himself, Beefheart's conciousness now drifted silently and alone in the vastness of space. It was as though he -

Beefheart's thoughts were shattered as he hurtled backwards through the bridge and out the stern of an Arcturan plasma freighter and its crew as they dropped out of lightspeed on way to refuel and get a little "mu shu". With the thoughts of each and every crew member ringing in his prana, Beefheart watched the freighter shrink to a dot, then bear starboard (or was it port?) into an elliptical orbit of Port Salut.

"Oh well," he pontificated. "Stay positive. At least I won't have that fucking nagging voice in my ear while I'm trying to sleep."

A ghastly chuckle scratched its icepick fingertips around the back of what Beefheart had recently felt to be his eyeballs, and gasped, "Wanna bet...?"