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...?"