This is a boy’s adventure tale.
But this is not a boy’s adventure tale prepared by a stuffy old man in a tweed jacket with elbow patches. This is the sort of story that a boy might imagine for himself, filled with action, mystery, a red-hot space queen, and nary a whiff of precious moral instruction.
Well, maybe there is some moral instruction. But this is Reversed Black Maria. Nothing is as it seems, and the thread is–well, who knows? I wouldn’t take any bets if I were you.
Boys Adventure Tale Part 10
Oskar’s blood turned to ice water. “No. No, no, no,” he exclaimed, shoving the knife away.
The Empress cocked her head and frowned. “Oskar, focus. Your grandfather had the right idea. He cut off his own arm to escape. If I die, the Spooky engines will be locked.”
“But you’ll be dead.”
“That’s the idea, Oskar. Your problem will be keeping me that way long enough for the safecracker to finish. Your best bet is decapitation. I’ll remove my helmet. Slice off my head, and keep it away from my body until the door opens. You can revive me by replacing it on my shoulders. It will reattach by itself. I think my body will stay put in the meantime, but I’ve restrained it, just in case.”
Oskar stared up at her, horrified. “Inna, no. No way. That’s not a plan. It’s insane.”
“I know what I’m doing,” she replied firmly. “Don’t you remember what I showed you in your grandmother’s kitchen? Don’t you remember the island? I’ve been shot to ribbons, flayed alive, bled dry, decompressed, disemboweled–killed any way you can imagine. I always revive.”
“Have you ever been decapitated?”
“Not completely, no.”
“Then how do you know you’ll revive?!” Oscar demanded. “Inna, this is crazy. Think of something else. Anything else. Please.”
“There’s no time for that. We’ll ghostride any second.”
“No. I can’t. I’m sorry.”
She grabbed Oskar and pulled him close, her eyes hard as diamonds. “Oskar Winter, this is not about you. The peace of the galaxy hangs in the balance. If I am lost, there will be war. You are here because I thought you were fearless. I believed you were destined for great deeds. One is now before you. Will you prove me wrong?”
Her words struck Oskar like a backhand blow. Shame overcame his fear. “I’ll do it,” he choked.
She jammed the knife into his rubbery hand. “The stud under the thumb activates it. Make it neat, please.”
“Wait..!”
It was too late. Inna doffed her bubble helmet. A thin cloud of vapor chuffed out from around her neck dam. Bloody froth dribbled from her nose, but her blinding eyes never wavered from his own. NOW! she mouthed soundlessly. Crimson sputum peppered Oskar’s helmet.
He thumbed the switch mechanically. The blade flared to life in his hand. He swung. The knife struck Inna’s neck, and bit effortlessly, offering only a ghost of resistance when it severed her spine. Her head toppled forward, propelled by the pulsing geysers of her carotid arteries. Oskar somehow retained enough presence of mind to catch it. The hateful plasma knife clattered away. Rooted in primal horror, Oskar watched as Inna’s strangely erect body bled out through the stump of her neck. He waited for it to collapse.
Instead, it moved.
It moved not with the decerebrate tics of swiftly approaching death, but with purpose. Black-gloved hands reached upward, groping for a face. When their bloody fingers encountered empty space where it ought to be, they began a search. Her immense body turned from side to side, reaching, feeling blindly with its hands. A fingertip brushed against Oskar’s helmet.
Inna’s body lunged at him.
Oskar barely avoided its grasp. He stumbled back, boots sliding on great puddles of blood. Inna’s body lurched drunkenly after him. When Oskar believed that he would go mad from fright, his hideous pursuer reached the end of its tether. It slipped, and sprawled in the charn at his feet.
His reprieve was short-lived. Inna’s body gripped the tether and pulled. So prodigious was its strength that the stout balustrade anchoring it began to bend. The brackets holding the rail to the bridge twisted and stretched like taffy. Oskar sprinted to the farthest corner of the landing. He felt the shocks as the brackets failed. The balustrade bowed outward, and Inna’s indomitable corpse advanced. For a white–knuckled eternity, Oskar watched the twisting, contorting form come closer and closer, leaving an unspeakable trail of gore in its wake.
But after a time, it flagged, and the warped railing held firm. Inna’s enormous cadaver sank to its knees and collapsed in a toneless heap. Oskar waited, hardly daring to breathe. A little pool of blood formed at the stump of Inna’s neck. After a time, even the trickle of blood ceased to flow. The remains of the Empress were inert. Oskar finally remembered to check the skylight above the atrium, and saw the same wan gas clouds and small stars. Galaxia hadn’t budged. Inna’s mad plan was working. But Oskar was alone in deep space, with only a closed door separating him from the enemy.
He hunkered low, cradling Inna’s severed head in his lap. Mustering all his willpower, he looked down at his terrible charge. It nestled in his arms atop a cushion of blood–stiffened hair. Inna’s eyes were frozen wide, coin-silver irises floating on ghastly pink sclera, like the scales of fresh fish in a market case. His own reflection stared back from them, a small, sad spaceman in a very big, dangerous galaxy.
Who was Inna? Oskar had met her only yesterday, but it felt like he’d known her for a lifetime. She loomed large in his mind, always in motion, always in control, and always perfectly, utterly herself. She was scary–terrifying, even–but he’d never met anyone so alive or so implacably confident. He longed to see her smile again, overly wide and full of teeth though her smile was.
A hint of movement jarred Oskar out of his miserable reverie. Blinking back tears he hadn’t known he’d cried, he nervously scanned the landing. Inna’s statuesque carcass lay where it had fallen, the bridge door was still shut tight, and the display of the safecracker still scrolled endless lines of gibberish. But wherever Oskar looked, there was movement off to the side that vanished as soon as he faced it. Had horror and grief had driven him insane, or were his smarting eyes just playing tricks? But when his gaze fell again on Inna’s dead eyes, he saw more than one figure reflected in them.
Oskar jerked upright and looked around. The landing was deserted. Shivering with dread, he forced his gaze back to the dead woman’s eyes. There, he beheld a multitude. Most were alien horrors with fishlike eyes–Arzenekoi, the Empress’ usual prey–but there were humans, too. A stern man with a noble brow and iron-grey hair met Oskar’s stare head-on. He was aware of him.
That’s it. I’ve gone insane.
“I’m sorry. You all knew her, right? Of course you did. You must know it was her idea, and what that means. Did I have any more choice than you did?” Oskar stammered.
The stern man shook his head.
Oskar’s heart nearly stopped. The only thing worse than this visitation being madness was for it to be real. “What should I do?” he pleaded.
The man’s mouth moved. Look at her.
Oskar did. The stump of the Empress’ neck was writhing like an insect. Her raw flesh was busily extruding fractal sculptures of pink tissue. A roiling blob of yellow fluid bubbled up from her depths. It solidified into a clean white vertebra. The new bone was instantly enrobed in flesh and lost to view, and a fresh spiral of yellow nodes coalesced atop it. Oskar realized what he was watching, and it filled him with a fulminating mixture of hope and fear.
Raina’s prone body was growing a new head.
Oskar had never heard of anything more sophisticated than a worm growing a new brain. It filled him with exquisite unease. Would the new Empress be like the old one? Would she remember who she had been? Would she remember her life and her friends? Would she remember Oskar?
Or would she be an amnesiac goddess of death, enraged and infinitely ravenous?
I'm going to be her first meal, Oskar thought, panic-stricken. The way he saw it, he had just one hope. With no plan but survival, he stumbled forward and jammed Inna’s old, familiar head onto her blossoming neck. It stuck fast. In a matter of seconds there was no sign of a suture. Her neck was as creamy and unblemished as that of a storybook princess. It was an encouraging sign.
Feeling optimistic, Oskar retrieved her helmet. He wiped away the blood as best he could and snapped it tight onto her neck ring. It fogged immediately when it pressurized. He then decided to roll her onto her back. It took him several tries. Inna was extraordinarily heavy, and supple as water. Worn out from his exertions–both the physical and the psychic–Oskar collapsed across her body. She lay still as a corpse beneath him.
It was a very short respite.
A pair of scuffed orange space boots walked into veiw. Oskar looked up, and discovered Farfar Hendrik looming over him. The old man’s eyes were blank as marbles behind the faceplate of his helmet, and he clutched Inna’s forgotten plasma knife in a menacing fist.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10