Author : Thomas Tilton
“Stax, hull breach!” Wattler gurneyed from portside of the Excelsior, his plastoscreens ablaze, his catheter tube streaming a current of nervous yellow piss to the ship’s water purification system.
“I need refueling!” cried Stax–telepathically, of course. The slobs had not spoken more than a word aloud to each other since the start of their eighteen-year mission.
Stax gurneyed himself under the fuel disseminator, which resembled a late-twentieth-century soft serve ice cream machine. Out of its spout poured plentiful heapings of baconnaise, the Terrans’ most prized garnish.
“Ready!” thought-spoke Stax, savory baconnaise drizzling from his gaping unhinged maw and coating his black-bearded jowls, like the spent loveseed of some intergalactic lard pig.
There were no windows on the Excelsior and of course their assailants would not be visible even if there were–not even to the trained oculi of the slobs, whose eyes were digitally enhanced and coated to ensure maximum clarity and sharpness. Space battles were very long-distance affairs.
Wattler needlessly–they were telepaths, after all–brought Stax up to speed. “They’re firing in waves. Hull integrity compromised on the aft decks. The ship’s nanobots are compensating and rebuilding.”
“Check. Reverse thrusters. Strategized target selection, fire at will and random.” Stax directed his thought-commands at both Wattler and the ship’s computer, which was wired to both pilots’ brains via access ports in the slobs’ faceholes.
A quiet, soft, feminine voice stunned them into cerebral silence. “Stop, you foolish men!”
Their plastoscreens lit up white. The entire interface appeared blank and bleached. Then she appeared. Filling the screen, a beautiful hentai maiden with a shimmering blue dress, skin like creamy baconnaise, a short button nose almost like a pimple, and improbably wide, impossibly blue eyes.
Had the slobs breathed in any conventional sense of the word, those breaths would have been taken away.
“You … you call us men,” telesaid Stax.
“We have not been called that in some time,” telesaid Wattler.
“You are men,” said the hentai maiden, “though you may have forgotten. Once you were a proud, upright race. Now you have let the Terrans weaken and destroy you.
“I am Roog. I am a demigod. This is not what I look like. I take the form of whatever my spectators desire most. Yours is a lusty, hungry desire. But has that fiery thirst ever been truly quenched? Does the baconnaise sate?
“Have you ever drunk water from a spile of the spice trees on Yorn? Or fed the taloned squirrelcats on Betazus? When is the last time you felt the wind in your hair or the rains on your beard? Tell me, can a sedentary existence on a probe in deep space ev–”
The hentai beauty’s voice muted, then her head blew up.
“Insolent slander!”
“The baconnaise sates!”
The slobs had only feigned surprise at being called “men,” and they had not actually been listening to her diatribe. While the demigod spoke, they were working silently, telepathically, with the ship’s computer to create the biomechanical cocktail necessary to expel the intruding deity.
They would report Roog’s attempt at sabotage to their Terran benefactors. Now, they both needed refueling.
The 365 Tomorrows Free Podcast: Voices of Tomorrow
This is your future: Submit your stories to 365 Tomorrows