Catch a Falling Star

Canto 81 – Mong the Miser-like (The Midnight Blue Thread)

Tara Salongi stood next to the conference table in the reception room of the main hall.  She wore a diaphanous blue gown that, with its see-through fabric, was quite revealing of her newly-healed feminine form.  In fact, it was the kind of dress that, if this story were a Japanese anime, it would be called fan service.  But, of course, it was no more so than the fur bikini she had worn for most of her old life back on Don’t Go Here.

At that moment, Emperor Mong, who had summoned Tara, entered through the double-door entrance.

“Ah, the beautiful sorceress Tara Salongi, I believe,” said the sinister looking bald man with the goatee that came to a sharp point under his chin.

“Yes, I am here.  What do you want of me?”

“I am told that Wormheart Toadsucker, Admiral Tang’s left-hand sycophant, delivered you here by giving you over to Lord Dark Doo.”

“That is correct, if I know who you are talking about.”

“But the question is, my Lady, why weren’t the admiral’s specific orders carried out?”

“What do you mean?”

“Yes… whatever do you mean, Mong?” said Raylond, appearing from behind a curtain on Tara’s right.

“Excuse me, Lord King.  I do not believe it is business you were supposed to know anything about.”

“Am I not one of the ruling triumvirate of this star system with it’s multiple inhabited worlds?”

“Yes, that is so.  But the Admiral…”

“Wait a moment… do you mean Admiral Tang started a business in secret that he didn’t want me or Lord Hardretter to learn anything about?”

“That is correct… er, I mean… It was a local matter from another star system that the Admiral wishes to control… for Imperial security reasons.”

“So, tell me, what is the Admiral’s specific plan involving Tara, whom I consider to be under my protection for now?”

“Um, well…  Lord King, the fact is… this woman is a dangerous Psion.  The Admiral captured her at great personal risk to himself.”

“I am aware that she is a Psion.  But we have the proper shielding capability available to us, do we not?”

“Um, yes… but the Admiral wanted to ship her to the planet Djinnistan where Dr. Havir Bloodlust could possibly use his genetics skill to transfer her unique abilities into a suitable Mechanoid or even a controlled genetic Freak.”

“No sir.  I will not have it, sir.  She is under my protection.  Lord Hardretter and I have discussed ways to use her here on our worlds to better life for all of us.”

“Ah, but since Lord Hardretter isn’t here now, and I have the Admiral’s proxy vote in the matter…”

“Ah, but I am here, Mong.”  Smoky Hardretter, the teenage ruler of the system’s manufacturing worlds, stepped out from behind the curtain on Tara’s left.

“Lord Hardretter?  Uh, are you suggesting you are siding against me and Admiral Tang with Lord King?”

“That is exactly what I am suggesting.  We have use for the cooperative and lovely Psion, and two thirds of the ruling triumvirate can overrule even the Imperial Grand Admiral.”

 “So, maybe you should go back to playing with your rot warriors and tin men, Emperor Mong, and leave us to the business most beneficial to the Imperium,” said Raylond King.

Mong, white in the face and obviously frustrated, stormed out of the room.

“Thank you, Lord King.  And thank you too, Lord Hardretter,” said Tara.

“Think nothing of it,” they both said simultaneaously.

Canto 80 – Jungle Darkness and Damnthings (The Green Thread)

Running and sweating in the jungle darkness had begun to get very old.

“Climb a tree!” ordered King, pounding down the jungle path behind Hooey and Culver.  The damnthing, a huge, smelly pig-dog sort of predator, was close on their heels and all three men were beginning to tire.

A large, gnarled tree loomed straight ahead.  King leaped and caught its lower branches, swinging himself up into the lower branches like Johnny Weissmuller playing Tarzan on steroids.  Dr. Hooey imitated him to the very best of his ability, meaning he was as graceful as a hundred pounds of chopped liver being flung through the air by a baboon that had drunk three too many cups of coffee.  The good doctor managed to lodge himself on a branch just above the apex of the damnthing’s leap, though he was hanging upside down by one knee hooked over the branch.

“Help me!  I’m the expendable one!” cried Willie Culver as he missed the branches and tumbled butt first into the undergrowth.

“Dang it!” swore King Killer, “I told you that we were ALL going to make it!”  He leaped down from the branch that held him directly in front of Willie Culver.  “You do not have permission to die right now!” he swore.

            Unfortunately, directly behind King, the snorting damnthing lumbered up and came to a gum-gnashing, teeth-grinding halt so close that its spittle ran down into the back of King’s collar.

            “Oh, Gawd…” prayed Willie.  The pale expendable sidekick scrambled out from under King and used his fingernails to claw his way up the side of a foul-smelling babuti tree.  Babutis were an exotic form of alien tree that existed on several jungle planets which sprouted gorgeous orange and yellow flowers, but smelled so bad they made your eyes water like raging rivers.  The damnthing moved first to grab Willie, but the smell wrinkled its big pignose and resulted in the damnthing turning its attention to the Corsair King of Killing.

King, partly frozen in place by the vague hope that the thing’s vision was based on movement like he’d seen in an ancient Earther video about a dinosaur park, and partly winding up his interior springs for the leap of his life, slowly turned his head to stare right down the slavering gullet of the huge, nasty pig-dog thingy. 

“King, old buddy, you can’t die here either, you know,” admonished Hooey from his upside-down perch.

“I’m working on it,” said King.  His legs were taut with stored energy, ready to leap.  He vaulted forward at the same instant that the damnthing struck with its big-piggy chompers.  The beast growled.  King screamed.  Big pig teeth pierced the flesh of his shoulder.

“Aaargh!”

“Oh, no!”

“King!  My gawd!”

Just as it seemed that the damnthing would devour the King, a sudden flesh-colored flash came blazing out of the canopy on a sort of bungee vine.  It was a relatively small boy wearing nothing but some furry animal skins tied around his delicate parts.  He grabbed on to King with a grip of steel, and then the bungee pulled them both back up into the canopy, ripping King’s flesh out of the very mouth of death and dismemberment.

            The damnthing, stunned in its piggy surprise, blinked twice, and abruptly walked away into the jungle.

“What was that?” asked Willie, clinging to the bark of his smelly tree.

“That would have to be Randy the Jungle Boy,” said Hooey, without missing a beat.  “He’s not the only weird character we are about to meet in this jungle.”

“You knew what was going to happen?”

“Well, some of it.  I read about it in Googol Marou’s book, which I read in the future.  Of course, the timeline has been altered again, so I can’t predict anything with certainty.”

“Why?  What’s changed?”

“You were supposed to be the pig-dog’s lunch.  So, I guess you have to write your own destiny from here on, Willie Culver.”

Willie’s eyes grew round with sudden fearful gratitude to King Killer.  And it would only take another chapter or two for his heart to actually start beating again.