Pew! Pew! - Bad versus Worse Read online

  “Vlog on screen.” She changed it back to what was important, her vlog. It was live, after all.

  “Incoming,” a voice said behind her. It was a sultry male voice. Drexyl. My favorite.

  “I told you it was a monumentally bad idea to let her stay on the ship,” Drexyl said, “I know I’m the new guy and all, but doesn’t anybody ever listen to me?”

  “It’s okay, pet,” Soda told him, “I know you’re still mad, but we’ll get past this.”

  “Stop calling me that,” he said.

  Through the glare on the screen, Soda saw enemies materialize in the large room behind her. She heard the fighting sounds of steel on steel.

  “Careful, dear,” she said to Drexyl then turned back to her vlog. “Now where was I with you people?”

  Chapter 2

  Ari dodged swordfights around the bridge area of the ship trying to make it to Fleek’s room. She knocked on the door. One never knew what Fleek was doing in there with his fractals, and she had learned the hard way to never barge in. But this was an emergency, so she gave it a second and then entered.

  “Hey, Fleek. We’re under attack again. Soda’s in the middle of a vlog and while it’s live people can see our location.”

  Fleek groaned. “What do you want me to do about it?”

  “Take your pick. Weapon or computer. You can either fight the intruders or hack into the ship and try to manually scramble our location.”

  “That sounds like a lot of work,” he was lounging on the bed with his tablet, “I’m currently busy responding to fan mail. Rock star stuff, you wouldn’t understand.” His flame orange Mohawk flopped from side to side the way it does when he’s being stubborn. Ari could tell most of his moods by his hair. Rock stars.

  “No, I wouldn’t.” Ari was somehow surrounded by those with money, power, and fame which had somehow carefully avoided her when they were passing themselves out. Ray was a fabulously wealthy and famous oracle. Fleek, already rich and connected, had become and Intergalactic Rock Star recently. And Kirian was mythologically famous due to her fighting prowess and her own efforts to self-brand on the dark web. And then there was Soda, who’s wealth took a hit when her accounts were frozen after being deposed from the Overlord position, but she was still powerful and sassy and kept vowing to get her position back. Ari didn’t doubt her for a second, but she’d never admit it.

  Drexyl, Soda’s former prisoner, was gorgeous and a prolific gambler who was already amassing wealth Ari had never seen before. So even though she was one of the smartest beings in the galaxy and had saved the galaxy and Soda and Kirian plenty of times, she had nada. No wealth or fame or power for her. And she wasn’t bitter about it at all.

  “It has to be now, Fleek! Unless of course, you’d like to be dead. Hard to respond to fan mail when you’re dead. Am I right, girls?” Ari yelled loud enough to let the girls communicating with him hear.

  There was a new notification noise. “Send out the police. And the army. Save Fleek!”

  Ari rolled her eyes and then the impact hit her. Oh no. The authorities. If these girls call the cops, then we are in way bigger trouble.

  “Oh, no, girls. Kidding. Fleek’s not in any danger,” Ari said, getting close to his tablet so they could hear. “Please don’t call the police, no matter what you do. We don’t want you calling any authorities, do we Fleek?”

  “Hey, no cops, girls. Be cool, okay? I got this.” He turned off the tablet and frowned at her. “Who, or what, exactly, has boarded us?”

  Ari shrugged. “Looked like garden variety bounty hunters to me. The only thing we know for sure so far is that they are not Soda’s vlog fans.”

  “Fine,” he said and grabbed a weapon.

  “You’re not going to scramble our location?”

  “Of course I am, but you said there were bounty hunters already on board. So, it’ll have to be both weapon and hacking, not one or the other. You should grab something too. Not the Stingr, you’re junk with that thing. You’d probably cut one of our arms off.”

  “I swing it around having fun with it one time and nobody ever forgets.” She picked out a small laser pistol. They weren’t powerful or sexy, but they were compact and reliable. Like me.

  They exited the room together and headed back toward the bridge area of the ship where everything was happening. Ari could see that Kirian was happily fighting and Drexyl was keeping pace just fine so far. Soda was droning on and on.

  ***

  “Make sure you kill your enemies quickly,” Soda said, eying Ari’s approach back into the room. “If you let them hang around there will be no end to the amount of trouble they could cause you.”

  Bling. None of your information so far has addressed the question of how to get started.

  Soda heard the notification and turned back to what she was doing. “Fine, looks like we have a question. How to get started. I would add some visualization to the segment on advanced planning that I covered. You have to break it down into small, achievable steps. Make your own bridge to get there.”

  Bling. What were some of your very first steps in coming to power in this galaxy?

  I applied for the job, marched right in there, and then used my considerable power to convince them that I was the only option, lying my tentacles off the entire time. And they never had a chance because they are a group of absolute idiots. I can’t tell them that, though.

  “Okay, one of my first steps. Well, one of the ways I always start in this sort of undertaking is to scan the top job openings. Look around, do your research. Find out what’s out there for the taking before you blaze your own path. For instance, I found the open Overlord position for this galaxy one day at a coffee shop on Ankora on my way out of a dreadful system of planets a long way from here. See? Something as typical and boring as a help wanted ad could be a new beginning. I thought to myself, huh, I wonder what it’s like over in the unfashionable part of the universe that nobody cares about. So, you guys, if you’re local, have the first step half done. You go to the outer edges, the dregs of the universe. You never start with the big-time, those people will chew you up and spit you out.”

  Bling. We are supposed to be evil and take over the galaxy, right? Not just worm our way to the top. Applying for an open job seems to violate the spirit of the thing.

  “I see what you’re getting at here,” Soda said. “One thing you have to understand about those in power in any given galaxy is this: it’s mostly the idiots that rise to the top. The weakest minded, morally bankrupt, and easiest to corrupt are there. It’s easy pickings. I never said that I won the Overlord fair and square, I simply said that I did, in fact, apply.”

  Bling. What’s one of the next steps in your pathway to power?

  “Oh, I fully plan on jumping right back into politics.”

  “Great idea,” Drexyl jumped in, “hey, if she wants to jump back into politics, let’s just drop her off at the capital. Today.”

  “Not yet, Drexyl, these things require planning, haven’t you been listening to everything I’ve been saying in the vlog?”

  “No. I’ve been kind of busy fighting bounty hunters. I caught pieces here and there, though,” he said, out of breath.

  Ari, apparently lurking nearby and eavesdropping, jumped back into the conversation. “Wait. You were kicked out. Deposed. You can’t just walk back in and apply again like nothing ever happened.”

  “Why not?”

  That shut Ari up, but only for a second. “Oh, you know,” she answered, “the whole planetary destruction thing, secret spy armies, illegal weapons systems. All of that.”

  Soda continued, “Did I have scandals? Sure. Every politician does, but I’ll just run on my record.”

  Everybody stopped fighting, including the bounty hunters, to look at her.

  She turned around and waved three tentacles at them dismissively. “What are you people looking at anyway? Back to your fighting.” She waited a second for them to resume before continuing.

 
“Now, where was I? Oh yeah, say what you want, but when I was the Overlord, things hummed along quite nicely. I was the only female Overlord ever, too. And this new guy? Well he’s royally screwing up the place. I mean, name another candidate who has my kind of experience?”

  “You have got to be kidding me,” Ari said. Then paused before continuing, “The sad thing is, she’s probably right. This is why I hate politics. You do realize that Fleek and I have to leave soon. To do that thing. At Ray’s. The Holiday Special.”

  Fleek crossed behind Soda and was briefly on the screen. “Let me just try to get this locator thing re-scrambled first,” he said.

  Bling. Bling. Bling. Bling. Soda scanned the messages, but they were all variations on the same thing. “Yes, that’s Fleek, the singer from Chemical Zombies. Let’s try to focus, people.”

  Fleek took the opportunity to pose in front of the screen and give his rock star smile, his red Mohawk on full display. “Hi, guys!”

  Bling. Bling. Bling. Bling. Bling.

  An idea popped into Soda’s head. “Stick with my advice and even when you’re not running entire galaxies you can travel around with rock stars, and” she looked around, “mythologically famous warriors—”

  “Thanks,” Kirian said.

  Ari gave her a look.

  “And really good gamblers like Drexyl here.”

  “I am really good at that,” Drexyl said. “And look at my hair, even in the middle of battle, it’s perfect.”

  “And?” Ari asked.

  “And really smart annoying people too. If you’re really unlucky. There, are you happy?”

  “No.”

  Chapter 3

  There was a loud bang on the top of the ship.

  “What was that?” Ari asked.

  “Oh, I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Drexyl said.

  “We already have bounty hunters on board trying to kill us. Just now you’re getting a bad feeling?” Ari asked.

  “Yup.”

  “Oh yeah, he’s good at that too,” Soda said, “nearly has a sixth sense, that one. It could be anything, I mean I haven’t been this far out into the middle of space in eons. Just short trips for me, some teleporting—”

  Bling. Bling. Bling.

  “Oh yes, fine,” Soda said, “back to the vlog. Although aren’t you even the slightest bit interested in what’s out there, attacking us in the middle of the worst part of deep space? I mean it could be giant space spiders, or artificially intelligent apocalypse insects, or space harpies or—”

  “Hordes of artificially intelligent apocalypse insects in space are a thing?” Ari asked. “Thanks for the nightmares.”

  Bling. Bling. Bling. Bling.

  They were all angry and all wanted her to get on with her overlord advice. Except for one.

  Bling. Is it true that your true form is a giant space Kracken?

  “Hey,” Soda shouted, “that last one is a vicious lie.” It wasn’t, but it would probably come across as cheating even more, so she decided not to admit it. “That is, unless you’d pay more to hear ex-overlord advice from a giant Kracken? Starting a poll.” She tapped in the poll and hit enter just as another loud bang rocked the ship, this time on the other side. Even the bounty hunters were looking nervous now.

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  Bling. Bling. Bling.

  Soda could see bounty hunters, obviously startled by whatever was attacking the ship, disappearing back to their ships in the peripheral of the screen.

  “Okay, fine, where was I. Oh yeah, vet the galaxy carefully, make a plan, visualize. What’s next? Oh yeah, special talents. You probably have something that makes you different, unique, fun, and hopefully dangerous. Otherwise you’d be just another drone in the cog of everyday normal society, which is what I saved Ari from. You’re welcome.”

  “You didn’t save me from anything, you sent Kirian to kill me!” Ari objected.

  “But she didn’t, did she?”

  “Then you tried to kill me too,” Kirian said.

  “And you two returned the favor. Fine. I’m sorry I mentioned it. So special skills and talents. For instance, I’m immortal.”

  “You’re only mostly immortal, and even that’s because of some weird magic spell,” Drexyl said.

  “Shut up you, that’s privileged information,” she turned to yell at Drexyl and then back to her screen. “But on that subject if you find that you don’t have a special talent or skill, then there are ways to even that advantage out. There’s magic, money, and technology just for starters. There are any number of ways if you put your mind to it to gain an advantage. Remember, you will need to best all of your peers to illegally gain power, but make no mistake you will need an edge, sometimes more than one, and it’s better to be safe than sorry. This is all in the planning phase. In fact, take a minute right now and look around you at the faces and avatars of the other people in this vlog. Those people are your opponents. Visualize yourself kicking their—”

  Bling. What’s the next phase after the planning phase?

  Soda glanced over at the clock on the wall. Only ten minutes in? This was going to be more boring and take longer than she had thought. Bang. Bang. Crash. It sounded like whatever was outside of the ship had finally made its way in.

  Soda turned away from the console in time to see the last of the bounty hunters disappear. Ari screamed. What had breached the ship appeared to be, in fact, ghosts.

  “I don’t believe in ghosts!” Ari yelled. “This doesn’t make any sense! Whatever broke in was banging on the ship! Ghosts aren’t real. Or at least they aren’t material, so they can’t bang on anything!”

  Soda heard Drexyl scream. She turned to see that a couple of the wraiths had pounced on him. He wriggled away, kicking his way free, but not before they bit him.

  “Why do they have teeth?” Ari yelled. “Again, for the record, I’m trying very hard not to believe in ghosts.”

  “I don’t care what you believe in, Ari,” Drexyl said. “these things look real enough to me. And believe me, their teeth are real.”

  “Can you people shut up?” Soda asked.

  Bling. Bling. Bling. Bling. Bling.

  “Not you guys,” Soda said. “I was talking to them. Calm down, people,” Soda said. “Everything’s just fine.”

  Ari screamed again.

  “Except Ari,” Soda said, “she’s apparently having trouble processing reality.”

  “You’re so smart,” Ari yelled, “you tell us what to do!”

  Drexyl and Fleek joined Ari hiding in the galley. Kirian swung her Stingr light sword wildly at the wraiths, who seemed to dodge at the sword instead of away from it. The sword cut right through the middle of them without causing any damage at all. Kirian was backing up nearly to Soda now.

  “Kirian, take it toward the galley, would you?”

  “No!” Ari said. “Don’t take it toward the galley. Hey Fleek, can you warp us out of here?”

  “Too late. They’re inside, they’d just warp with us.”

  “Only the ones inside, right?”

  “Nope. Any of them in the vicinity. They have a different spatial connection to things than you or I.”

  “How do you know that?” Ari screamed to Fleek.

  “Don’t you ever read?” Fleek shot back.

  “Whatever, fractal boy. What do we do now?”

  Bling. Bling. Bling. Bling. Soda turned back around to the vlog people, she wouldn’t miss anything looking at the screen anyway the way everybody was shouting. “Keep it down over there, you guys,” she yelled, knowing full well they wouldn’t.

  Bling. Death by Space Ghosts seems like a good title for a movie.

  Bling. Already been done. There are six Death by Space Ghosts flicks, but only the first three are any good.

  Bling. Bling. Bling. Back to overlord stuff. What’s the next phase after the planning phase?

  Man, these people are needy, Soda thought. She peered at the username of the last question. It kept popping
up over and over again. It was the neediest, most pushy, and seemingly serious attendee of them all. It was froggy42 again. What a surprise.

  “Okay, we just received another on-topic question from froggy42, what is the next phase after the planning phase? I think that’s where we should continue.”

  Bling. Suckup.

  Bling. Loser.

  Bling. What about the space ghosts? And the hot girl with the sword?

  Bling. I want to see Fleek. Chemical Zombies Rule!

  “Back on topic,” Soda said, “obviously after the planning phase and the visualization phase comes the implementation phase. You’ve made your plan, and now you make it happen.”

  Nobody heard the end of her sentence, though, because that’s the moment that the ghosts floated into the galley, and more screams filled the room.

  ***

  Now that Ari was getting a better look at these space ghosts, it was like she had stepped into a horror movie.

  “Uh, guys?” Ari said. “Anybody know what to do now?” Please know, please know. The answer, as usual, was no as they all shook their heads and continued to back up.

  Fleek and Drexyl’s reaction to the galley invasion was priceless. The terrified look on their faces was exactly the sign that Ari was looking for to know that she was totally screwed. As usual, she was the one who was going to have to come up with something.

  “Then you guys are going to have to cover me while I look the whole thing up online and sift through whatever information I find.” She tried to take a picture of one that was way too close with her phone so that she could feed it into the computer. She snapped the shot. Yup, she thought, that’s it. Now how can we make all of you horrors go away?

  ***

  Ari ran screaming to the computer console next to Soda on the bridge and tried to find out what in wormhole space to do next.

  “Go away, I’m busy here,” Soda said as Ari threw herself into the chair next to her.

  “Too bad, I’m trying to save our asses,” Ari said. “As usual. Any helpful advice on the life or death situation that’s going on all around you would be helpful. Anything? You mentioned these stupid ghosts, any ideas on how to get rid of them and/or survive?”