Starcustard

Chapter Seven

2006-12-02T23:23:00.000Z

CUISINO ROYALE.

Chapter Six

2006-07-01T15:42:00.000+01:00

You can find it here or here.

Chapter Five

2006-02-24T17:12:00.000Z

you can now read starcustard on chris's website, fatmanintweed.com.

chapter five.

Chapter Four

2005-08-17T16:03:00.000+01:00

Optional music track: 'Incubus - Drive.'

Gen woke up to a pair of very bright, very wide eyeballs staring and blinking at her. She started up from the couch and couldn't help gaping back at the pale, opal face. Whatever it was had the body of some sort of beautiful fish, and it was suspended very gracefully in the air just above the level of Gen's head.

'She is so thin, Gregarium,' the voice of the creature commented softly.

Looking anxiously around for the doctor, Gen slowly began to walk to him, keeping one eye on the fish.

'There is breakfast here, Gen,' Gregarium answered. 'Tenua, try not to be impertinent.'

Gen watched this 'Tenua' and decided she looked most like an albino catfish. Catfish had been what the slave kids got fed every third weekend. Not many of the slaves had appreciated the variety in their diet, to say the least.

'Come on child, it's alright. Tenua is nobody to be nervous about.'

'Go eat,' the fish said to her. 'I know you must be hungry.'

Carefully, Gen approached the large tray on the low table. She sat across from Gregarium and he told her, as he helped himself to a small sticky bun and a glass of juice, to take anything she liked. All Gen could do was pick at a slice of toast and the dozens of kinds of fruit in front of her.

The catfish, who was apparently female, began to speak again, hovering over them and swishing about in the air like an annoying breeze. 'What's the matter, Gen? Nervous? I can never eat when I'm nervous. Not even fried tadpoles and they're-'

Gregarium coughed a little. Tenua stopped her inane chatter but continued to float around the room restlessly. An odd, thread-like tendril hung from her body, which brushed across the breakfast table as she flew low.

If Gen had even considered the idea of eating before, she certainly didn't want to now. She remained silent. She had nothing she felt she could say to these two.

'Can we do exciting things today?' Tenua asked, gliding over to Gregarium. She wrapped her tendril around his face. 'I want to do exciting things.'

Gregarium didn't seem too bothered by this. He must have been used to it. 'We're going to head for Hepthazard today.'

'The space station? What for?' Her tendril pulled away from him.

'We're going to help Gen here.' He nodded towards her.

Gen looked up. 'What's at Hepthazard?' she asked.

'I have a friend there,' explained Gregarium. 'You will be staying with him for a while. At least, I can't see you going anywhere else for the time being.

'It's not that I want to get rid of you or anything,' he added hastily, 'but, as it is, I have important work to do some way from here. It's commission work. I'm afraid I can't take you with me.

'This friend of mine - Mel Marsh, his name is - you'll be in safe hands with him. Relatively. He'll take you under his wing for a bit. He knows you're on your way. There's a custard café there that he runs, and he's willing to take you on as an employee.'

Gen thought for a moment. 'A custard café?'

Gregarium nodded. 'Yes. Custard shakes, frozen custards, even spacepastries, among other things. I believe there is a noodle maker that shares the same complex. I've been there several times; it's really quite lovely.'

Tenua nodded excitedly. 'Will you buy me a chocolate seaweed croissant, Gregarium, when we get there? Or an oatmeal eel-glazed roll? I love those.'

* * *

Andromed looked with a great hatred into the port where the last spacepod had been. Several other forlorn and lost-looking slavekids lurked behind him, less willing to go bursting loudly into the places they had previously been forbidden to enter.

Andromed was thinking what they all were thinking. She might come back for us. She will go to the Authorities. How long can we run? Where will we ever be safe?

He glanced at Stat. She looked back at him in horror. She appeared to be thinking along the same lines. 'We need to keep moving,' he said, fighting down the panic that was swelling up inside him.

'But we're tagged!' said Stat. 'They'll find us no matter where we go!'

'The pods,' said Andromed.

'There aren't enough for all of us.'

'I know that. But do they have any communications systems?'

'Only navigational,' said Stat, 'which means Mistress O will try to get to the nearest station, and alert the authorities from there. Where are you going?'

Andromed rapidly made his way to the pilot's cockpit. 'You, Captain!' he demanded. The man had obediently remained seated, and was looking quite afraid. 'How fast will this ship go?'

'If we go too fast, we'll arouse suspicion,' he warned.

'That's a risk I'm willing to take,' said Andromed. 'We need to catch up with those pods. How fast?'

'Fast enough.'

'Easily...what's the word? M...move...'

'Manoeuvrable?'

'Yes.'

'Fairly.'

'Good. This ship has an energy shield for its defence, doesn't it?'

The Captain nodded.

'And anything that touches it gets fried, right?'

'Yes,' said the Captain. 'What are you getting at?'

'Our chances our slim, but we don't really have any other option. We're going to catch up with them,' he said, 'and stop them.'

* * *

Optional music track: 'Nightmares on Wax - Mind Eye.'

After Gen had nibbled for as long as she could stand at her breakfast, Gregarium asked Tenua to look after her while he tidied his office and attended to a bit of business.

Picking up the trays of food, he went out of the room. Gen looked at the fish creature. Tenua blinked back at her, swimming slowly right up close to the girl's face.

'Do you want to explore the ship? Or do you need a bath? Gregarium always takes his bath before he does anything, always right after breakfast. I can show you the bathtub if you like. It isn't far. What's the matter? You keep moving... Watch out, there's a wall just there-'

Gen found herself backed against the green wallpaper and Tenua was still only inches away from her nose, blinking those big, glistening blinks as she fluttered her fins.

'Say something, Gen,' the fish urged.

A smile came to the girl's face as she realised that this fish was not calling her Hydie. Gen smiled, but she still couldn't find anything to say.

'Come on,' Tenua said. 'I will show you the best bathroom. I like to take naps there when Gregarium doesn't need me. Are you coming? Just wait 'til you see it. You'll love it.'

Tenua floated out into the corridor and Gen walked after her, trying to stay attentive to her chattering narration.

'Gregarium likes the bathtub adjacent to his office rooms. I think it's too dull there. His office rooms are all dull, just flat and plain. Don't you think so?' At Gen's silence Tenua began again, 'Perhaps you've not seen them yet. I'll show you them as well. You do want a bath, don't you? I think it would be good for you.

'Oh look, the elevator light is on! The elevator light is so beautiful. Today it is bluish purple and that means it needs to be charged, but we can still take it...'

Gen could not help letting her thoughts drift off. The walls of the corridors and elevators were so polished- she wondered who polished them. This ship with no name was humongous. Tenua led Gen meanderingly through it, up winding staircases, past all kinds of oddities for which Tenua declared they had no time. I wonder if it is bigger than our ship, Gen asked herself. Then she asked herself why she had called it 'our ship' when it never had been hers, when she would probably never go back to it or see it again.

'Gen, wait, don't turn that way, silly- we're here. Come in and see.' Tenua ducked her head and tail through a doorway, expecting nothing else but for Gen to follow.

The bathtub was indeed nothing less than spectacular. The most finely sculpted marble, smooth and soft, took up the centre of a room of sparkling tile and chrome accents. Gen was afraid to touch it, much less bathe in it. She knew her stepstepmother bathed in tubs like this one (only much larger), but Gen herself had only ever gotten a cold shower every other week.

Tenua showed her how to run the water and add bubbles. The girl stayed in the warm bath for a long time. She and Tenua splashed and giggled, trying out bottle after bottle of perfumed soaps and creamwashes. Gen wanted to stay in the bath all day, but Tenua insisted that there was too much more to see and drained the water. Gen took three towels and wrapped herself all up before Tenua had the chance to poke at her or push her back into her clothes too quickly. The fluffy warmth was too nice to rush through.

'Gen, Gen, get dressed so we can go down to the aquarium wing. They'll be feeding the two-headed shark in a few minutes. I think that shark is so, so, so sad. I wouldn't know what to do with two heads, would you? Gregarium says it's almost perfect though. A highly advanced, specially handcrafted animal. Come on, hurry.'

When Gen was dressed, the two of them found their way into a brilliantly, colourfully lit room. It took a minute for Gen to see that there were fish swimming about in the thin walls. Tenua was still talking.

'This bit is the entry maze. The walls are full of water, isn't that cool? Oh hey, it's Georgio. Look at him, isn't he cute?'

Gen looked. Georgio was a tiny, purple octopus. He shook a few of his tentacles, turned to Tenua, and wiggled one of his three small eyes in a way that gave Gen a very odd chill.

Tenua turned to Gen and rolled her humongous eyes. Gen laughed.

'She's Gen,' the Tenua said to the octopus.

Georgio's reply was a funny little somersault.

'Come with us,' Tenua invited. 'We're going to see the shark.'

Gen could see a look of hesitance on his face, and a twitch in his long tentacles that hinted at several better things to do, but he looked up, right at her, turned, and started swimming along the wall.

He swam alongside the two others, bobbing and floating inside the fish-tank walls. Gen watched him and began to wish that she could reach out and touch the bright purple creature. If she remembered, she would ask Gregarium about it.

* * *

The Captain pressed buttons. 'I shall be branded a criminal... publicly executed! Do you know what that means? My career will be over!'

None of the slavekids were listening.

'Are we ready to go yet?' asked Andromed, impatiently. 'Every second we waste, Mistress O will be gettin' further and further away. The Authorities will be wond'rin' why you haven't tried to contact them if they find out.'

'I'm on it,' said the Captain, his voice trembling.

Andromed gazed out of the huge window that looked out into space. Stars twinkled in the distance. He and the two others in the cockpit with the Captain flinched as one as the view lurched and the stars streaked and blurred. The pods came into view as tiny, glistening little objects quite far off.

'What happened?' asked Andromed, gripping the back of a chair for support that he didn't need. 'Did we just move forward?'

'Good gracious, no,' said the Captain. 'Not at that speed. I just zoomed in so we knew where they'd got to.'

Andromed looked at the Captain, then at the window, then at the Captain again. 'That's not a window?' he said, slightly astonished.

The Captain looked appalled. 'Don't you have any idea how massively impractical that'd be? The amount of splatkrobs that hit your average ship... I mean, the window would be caked by them! And think of the security! That's easy access for pirates, that is.' He resumed with his control-fiddling, muttering and shaking his head. 'Window indeed.'

Then he said, 'Once I start up the shield, we won't be able to go so fast because of the energy drain. You want me to wait until we're close before I do?'

'How long does it take to charge up?'

'About two minutes.'

'Then we wait.'

'Right then,' said the Captain, taking a deep breath. 'The chase begins.' He curled his hand around a lever and pulled it down and back up again quickly. The thrusters flared, and the ship began to move forward. He then began to pull the lever down again, this time much more slowly and gradually, and the ship's acceleration climbed to the fastest it could go. The Captain then turned his attention to the massive metal steering wheel.

Optional music track: 'Black Sabbath - Neon Knights.'

Stat entered the cockpit. 'This is mad,' she told them, having figured out what they were going to do.

''Course it is,' said the Captain. 'You're all mad. Mad, crazy and insane also.'

The pods now looked much closer on the screen. They remained close together. Andromed knew you could do that with the pods. Mistress O had probably made sure of it. Having them all in the same place, however, might have been a big mistake.

'Captain, zoom back out to normal,' he said. 'Then we can tell exactly how close they are.'

The screen reverted to the default view. The pods were visible, and the ship was rapidly catching up with them.

'Shields, now!'

The Captain, simultaneously trying to steer, slammed his fist down on a fluorescent green button. For a moment, the lights on the ship dimmed, flickered and then restored. There was a jolt as energy surged across the surface of the ship. From outside the ship, the only thing that suggested the shield was there was the slight ripple in the light due to waves of heat.

'Almost there,' said Andromed.

The Captain's hands shook violently. 'Still charging,' he managed. 'I...' He gulped and took a deep breath. Beads of sweat appeared on his brow. 'I can't do this. I can't kill-'

Stat pushed him out of the way and took control of the wheel. 'No time for your wimpy snivelling,' she said.

Organza had obviously guessed their game, and the pods began to drift away from each other. Now the ship was almost adjacent to one of them.

'Turn left, sharp!' shouted Andromed. Stat did so, struggling with the weight of the wheel. The ship hit the pod, the shield crackling. The pod glowed red, then white hot, and then exploded. The ship shook and the shield's energy dropped.

The Captain sat on the floor, whimpering.

'Quick, get that one!' Andromed yelled, pointing at the screen.

Stat, with difficulty, turned the ship around back to the left. The blunt nose of the ship brushed against the escaping pod, but it managed to get away.

Andromed was about to tell her to go after it when the power died. The shield died, the lights and everything else inside the ship shut down, and they were left floating in space.

The two remaining pods were getting further and further away, and there was nothing they could do about it.

Andromed swore.

* * *

Optional music track: 'Linkin Park - Session.'

Gen stared at the two-headed shark. It scared her. Tenua looked at it too, very intently, blinking far less often than usual. One of Gregarium's robots fed it spacefish from a bucket. The two heads didn't fight. In fact they both seemed oddly disinterested in food, very lethargic and almost bored.

Gregarium appeared behind them as they were saying goodbye to Georgio, who did indeed have better things to be doing.

'What do you think of my shark, Gen?' the doctor asked.

Gen only turned around and stared at him, expressing her wonder that way. Tenua began jabbering about what they had done all morning, but Gregarium interrupted her.

'Tenua, it's past noon. Have you and Gen eaten yet?'

'Ah! Lunch! What time is it? I believe I was getting hungry, watching that shark eat his fish. What do you want for lunch, Gen? Let's take the elevator to the kitchen. I know the chef will have something good.'

And so they went. Gregarium watched the girl follow his chattering fish down the corridor and hoped she was doing alright.

Chapter Three

2005-08-16T17:57:00.000+01:00

Optional music track: 'The Flaming Lips - Slow Motion.'

The Captain was blissfully unaware of the death of his employer, and just assumed that all the hubbub coming from outside the pilot's cockpit was Ms Organza going about her daily business (loudly moving across the ship, shouting loudly at the slavekids and loudly seducing her husband, trying to get him to buy her new things that would inevitably aid her apparent quest to become all the louder). Therefore it came as quite a surprise when a group of three slavekids burst through the door wielding cutlery.

Instinctively, he threw his hands up in the air in the universal sign of surrender. 'What the hell do you think you're doing in here?' he yelled, realising who they were and completely forgetting the position his arms were maintaining. They flopped to his side when he noticed their shiny weapons. 'Oh hell,' he said. 'Something's happened, hasn't it?'

Still trying to hold their fierce poses throughout the disturbing revelation that this man was especially slow on the uptake, the exact opposite of what his occupation as Captain of the ship demanded, the three slavekids adopted a combination of eye-rolling and vigorous, impatient nodding.

'Ah,' said the Captain. He stroked his fuzzy grey beard thoughtfully. 'So what happened, then?

The slavekids stared at him and the room's tension grew cold and stale. The Captain grew impatient and finally said, 'You,' pointing to one taller, menacingly gawky kid, 'Tell me what's happened. Where are Mr and Mrs Nousu?'

'Master's killed. And Mistress O run off.'

The Captain's eyes blinked and widened. 'Killed how?'

'The girl Gen what done it, sir,' the other boy said.

'With a plant,' the skinny slavegirl added, in a tone which suggested that this resourcefulness had made a most impressive display.

'Gen? With a plant? When the hell?'

Nobody spoke, giving the Captain adequate time to adjust this new information in his brain.

'Are you all sure he's dead?'

The nodding and eye-rolling commenced once again, accompanied this time with various gestures indicating bloodstains on bits of their sleeves and hems and shoes.

'And little Hydrogen? Where is she now?'

Silent gazes wavered around among the four of them. The tall gawky boy shrugged at the Captain and fingered the thick tines of a large carving fork.

'What now.' The Captain nodded as he said this; it was not as much a question as a submissive statement-a surrenderance of authority to this armed and determined mob.

'Enough with asking us stuff,' the less-gawky slaveboy started forward. He put his greasy but obviously sharp knife (stolen from the dish room) into his other hand and went up to the Captain. 'You en't gonna report this to the authorities, are you?'

The knife shook just slightly in the slaveboy's hand. Leaning away from it, the Captain said softly, 'Of course not.'

'And you won't let Mistress O, or anyone else, report us, will you?' The Captain shook his head.

'And you'll fly this ship wherever we says?'

'Well, within regulations. Certainly.'

Six eyes narrowed at him then. The Captain gulped and stammered to amend his hesitance. 'You don't want to be caught, do you? The Space-traffic Control people will notice any irregular flight patterns. It isn't like I can do whatever I please with a ship this size, you know.'

The slavekids frowned.

'Good enough,' the boy with the knife said. Then he turned to his fellow slaves. 'You both keep your eyes on him. Don't let him move from this chair.' With that, the boy pointed with his weapon to said chair. The Captain did not sit down.

'I can't fly the ship from that chair!' he protested.

'Then learn quick. I'll be back.'

As he left the room, the girl and the tall, gawky kid took up positions on either side of the chair and held their weapons tightly.

* * *

Organza Nousu was frustrated. She was bored of applying endless coats of lip liner and mascara, and she also could not get her favourite purple fuzzy slippers to stay on her tail. Hydrogen was the only one who could ever do it properly. Stupid girl. Stupid stupid stupid girl. Organza's bony fingers grasped the silver pole at the corner of her bed so tightly the metal whined and strained against the pressure.

Everything seemed to have gone quiet outside the room.

* * *

Optional music track: 'Beethoven - Fur Elise.'

'Where are we?' Gen wanted to know.

Gregarium held open the door for Gen with one hand and helped steady herself so she would not fall down the semi-spiral staircase. 'We are,' he began to answer, 'on the upper-east boundary of Sector 974BS9, at the moment. This,' he paused to nod around him at the walls and stairs and floor, 'is my ship. I haven't yet given it a name.' Here Gregarium grew thoughtful.

'Oh,' said Gen, wondering if ships were often given names, and for what possible reasons.

* * *

Andromed looked down at the dead mass of Gilt Humphrey Nousu with a slight frown on his face. 'What are we going to do with him?' he asked Statika, the blonde-haired girl who was doing exactly the same. 'He'll stink the place out before long.'

Statika poked his flab with her foot. 'How many of us do you think it'll take to lift him?' she asked.

'Why?'

* * *

The doctor was still holding Gen's arm as they stepped down the stairs. After several moments of soft muttering, concerning the namelessness of his ship, Gen imagined, he cleared his throat and looked down at her.

'And Gen,' he addressed her very cordially, 'where is it you come from? How did your spacepod get stuck in the waste shute like that?'

Gen shivered a little, thankful that the man hadn't asked about Mars. She wasn't quite sure where to begin in answering Doctor Gregarium's question, but after a little thought she started with Neon and Orph, deciding that they would make the most direct answer.

'These two slavekids started a big fight on the ship I was on before. My stepfather got... got killed and my stepstepmother-' Gen stopped and started again. 'I ran away. I don't know what to do or where I'm going.'

* * *

The slug's cold, leathery skin obliterated the view of their hands as they carried it to the broom closet. The six of them wobbled and swayed, sweating under his immense size.

'Is it empty?' called Stat. 'And as it open?'

'Yup.'

'Right, those at the front come round to the back so we can push his arse up and shove him in. You,' she said to the girl holding the door open. 'As soon as we get him in, we need you to shut the door as fast as possible.'

Since the corpse had very little backbone, they struggled greatly getting the body into the closet because he kept folding in the middle, but they eventually managed. His flab refused to stay in, however, and there was a round of kicking and punching the body to get him all in, before Stat called for the door to be shut. They all had to help with closing it as the flab insisted on fighting back, and even when the door finally clicked shut, they weren't sure it would stay like that.

* * *

'Careful, it's a bit of a jump here.' Gregarium went first and then helped Gen down from the end of the staircase. For some reason it simply stopped three feet above the floor. They had reached a room of dark green and darker green stripes. The furniture was all a pale, almost pastel orange. It seemed like they had stepped into a large, algae-infested fish tank. Gen settled into the softness of one armchair while Gregarium fiddled with the room temperature. Once it was suitably comfortable he sat across from Gen and continued his questions.

'And the boy?'

Gen looked at the wall. 'He... Mars, he was a slaveboy too. He helped me escape.'

Gregarium looked very solemn. The girl still stared at the wall.

'Your stepparents,' he began, carefully inquisitive, 'What were they like?'

'Slug people. Rich. Horrible.'

Gregarium then wanted to ask 'How were they horrible? ', and gather specific details about the situation, but he knew he could not treat this girl as a case study. She needed help, not a psychoanalytic examination. He nodded, accepting Gen's simple description and pondering what to do next.

'Well, my dear, you may stay on my ship for as long as you like. Oh, may I ask, also-' He raised his large eyebrows earnestly, 'about your real parents?'

Sharp recollections of her stepfather's meaningful glance towards her as he towered above the petrified slaveboy filled her mind.

'I...I don't know anything about them to tell you,' she said.

The way he had looked at him...

'But I intend to find out,' she said. 'One day.'

* * *

Optional music track: 'The Ramones - Cretin Hop.'

Organza slid up and down the room, thinking. If she could reach the main computer, she could contact the Authorities. And have them all fried, she thought venomously.

She risked another peak outside the room. She then made her way quietly to the railings. There wasn't a slavekid in sight. It was probably now or never. She slithered quickly down the stairs and to a locked door. 'Let me in!' she hissed into the voice recognition device. She pushed the door open and made her way to the computer: a large metal cuboid attached to the wall, covered with blinking lights, buttons and switches.

'Passwords, passwords,' she said to herself. 'Lasagne. No... bolognaise. Right. Next one...um...er...um... what's the next one?!'

'Quick, somebody! Mistress O is at the main computer!'

'Oh no...'

* * *

'Steady on, people!' exclaimed the Captain. 'We can't all fit in here!'

'Oh, my poor dignity,' moaned Organza. They had all gone to catch her, except two who stayed and watched the Captain, and now they were all in the cockpit. 'Traitors! Traitors and ship thieves and life ruiners!'

'Mrs Nousu, I'd be careful if I was you,' warned the Captain. 'They have cutlery!'

'And you!' she continued. 'You were well-paid and well-fed and we offered you that hair-colouring stuff but you just wouldn't take it! And now this?'

'With all available respect, Mrs Nousu, you did buy an awful lot of these kids.'

'Oh, that's it, blame it on the innocent!' cried Organza. 'What did you do to my children? And where's that filthy little Hydie?'

'She escaped,' announced Stat, stepping boldly and smugly forth.

'Escaped? Escaped?! ' yelled Organza. With a squealy roar, she tore through the slavekids and out of the cockpit. She slid through the corridors, obliviously passed the closet her husband was taking residence in, and rushed to the escape pods, with the slavekids after her. Two of the pods, she found, were already packed full of minislugs, each bearing a petrified expression. 'My beautiful children!' she said. 'We need to get away from this place! Pull the green and black levers, quick!' she told them, before cramming herself into a third.

The slavekids were too late. Three more escape pods were launched from the ship into space.

* * *

Optional music track: 'Muse - Ruled By Secrecy.'

Gregarium gazed at the girl, lost in her thoughts. He sat there quietly with his own thoughts, steadily coming to some decisions. The warmth of the room wrapped itself around Gen's mind and she drifted into a deep sleep. Grasping the arms of his chair, the Doctor heaved himself up. Just outside the room, he lifted a slim silver device from his lab coat pocket, dialled a number and brought it to his pointed ear. After a few moments, he spoke. 'Hell...Hello? Is that Mel? Mel Marsh? Ah yes, of course it is. Listen, can I ask you for a small favour?'

Chapter Two

2005-08-16T17:42:00.000+01:00

Optional music track: 'Jeff Beck - Where Were You?'

Mars still had the crowbar in one hand. He had used it to break a few locks, bend a few rules. It felt good to grip the metal, even if it meant having to type his signals one-handed and nudge two or three knobs at once with various fingers. The boy didn't notice Gen's tears until their spacepod was well out of sight of the ship, and instead of intruding with questions, he let her cry and tried not to think about what would happen if-no, he corrected himself, not if-when he was discovered missing. He had known slavekids who had tried to escape, and they had never come back or been heard from again.

Gen had taken off the head of her spacesuit to rub her eyes. She wanted to take off the rest of the ugly thing, but since she didn't know what was going to happen or what she might have to do next, she kept it on and watched Mars between her sniffles. When she stopped crying, she asked him where they were going.

He only shrugged.

* * *

Somewhere quite far away, in a control room on the third floor of the Slavekid Card Authority Office Spacestation 1.48, two thin, pasty aliens sat in cushy swivel chairs and monitored what might be called, and not without reason, their empire. One of them was bald, and the other was not quite, but very nearly bald. Although the billions of slavekid cards they traded each day legally belonged to their many and various clients, ultimate power belonged to them. And the development of the microbioelectronics industry had given them so much power. So much dreadfully, dreadfully painful to think about power.

'Two runaways in sector 974BS9,' one of the aliens said to the other. 'Oh, wait, one's been caught and identified already, I see.'

'Alert the cardholders anyway. Both of them.'

The first alien did so, typing a sequence of codes into his automessenger. 'Ha. First one's had it returned, but we'll have to punish it for him, no doubt. Let me verify the circumstances on that first though. And Cardholder two, I see, didn't even notice their slavekid was missing. High-end client, that one.'

'What's the name?'

'Nousu. Gilt H. Nousu. Asks if we'll be so kind as to take care of it for him.'

'With pleasure,' our second alien replied. 'Give me the coordinates and the card code.'

'Why don't you take care of the punishment for the other first? Let me get check there's no one in 974BS9 who's immediately interested in a deviant slavekid. No need to kill the thing if we can get something out of it, eh?'

'Alright, alright.' And while one alien searched the black market classifieds, the other measured out a dose of high voltage e-punishment, uploaded it through his handheld device, and with a few clicks and an evil laugh, sent it to Slavekid 5326R, who just fifteen minutes ago had wandered more than thirty yards from his cardholder and gotten lost in a toyshop.

No suitable Wanted Ads were found, and both executives turned their attention to the other slaveboy, the truly escaped one.

* * *

'Why did you help me?' Gen wanted to know. Her eyes were red and her face streaked all over from crying.

'I just--well, you're such a cute girl. And so sad all the time.'

Gen sniffed. Mars grinned at her and dug a tissue out of the compartment under the control board.

'Thank you,' she said. 'Are you really in danger? Will you really get caught?'

'What do you think? You saw what happened back there. Neon and Orph, they didn't know what they were getting into, acting like that. Look what they sta-ahh arrhrhhrfrifrifreiihnooooooooooooooo Nooooopleeeeeeeeaaaaaspleepuleezznonoo oh.'

Gen did not want to watch. Her eyes begged her to turn away, but she stayed motionless, looking at Mars, watching his skin turn deep red-brown and then a crispy, horrifying black while he screamed to nobody for mercy. His scream stopped suddenly, cut off as if by some terrible, invisible guillotine. Gen stared, so frightened she could not move or think or breath. She didn't dare to. Nothing Gen had ever witnessed before in her life had been as traumatic as watching Mars suddenly die less than ten inches away from her. It took her three and a half long, silent minutes before she let out her breath.

Then the whole world shook.

* * *

Optional music track: 'Blur - Ambulance.'

An odd-looking ship was currently gliding through space. It was odd in the way that it looked quite a bit like a potato; one of those large, deformed, knobbly ones, except it was as black as coal, and the knobbly bits glowed an alien green. It also had tubes sticking out of it in places. It was such a ridiculous shape that it couldn't have possibly been launched through any planet's atmosphere, but built in the vacuum of space, by someone with an unusual sense of humour.

That someone was Doctor Gregarium, who was currently clipping his toenails.

His big toenail was being the most awkward. It wasn't a cleanish cut like the others; he had to pull and twist at it because it was so tough. He managed a corner, and it struck all four office walls before bouncing out of the room entirely.

The office was a concoction of burgundy and teal, with sharp, angular furniture, various trinkets and gadgets, and rather surprised-looking portraits on the walls, presumably of family. The large, austere desk was covered with paper - lots of documents, letters, essays and notes-to-self - that spilled over onto the floor and made entry and exit a particularly exciting affair; there were a couple of teal lamps in the shape of elephants, some stationary and, presently, his foot, which happened to be attached to his leg, and if you followed this, you would arrive at the rest of him, seated in a large, leather swivel chair.

If he stood, he would have been quite tall. He was a bespectacled man who looked to be in his thirties, and a slight smile always troubled his lips that seemed to be a mix between the inquisitive and the amused. His ears were slightly pointed and his eyes were a clear grey. His hair was in tall, thin spikes; silver, tipped with red, giving a strong impression of surgical implements. He wore, at this moment, dark trousers, one shiny black shoe (the other had been tossed aside for the time being), and a brightly coloured t-shirt. He also wore a lab coat, otherwise he didn't feel he was doing his title of 'doctor' justice.

The nail-clippers chewed experimentally on some more nail. Pinch, pinch, pinch... Nope, absolutely useless. Maybe if he had a bath first it would soften it up a bit?

'ALERT,' announced a decidedly feminine computer's voice. 'WASTE SHUTE CLOGGED. SHIP SUFFERING FROM CONSTIPATION. ALERT. PLEASE ATTEND TO IMMEDIATELY.'

'Oh my,' said Gregarium, only half pulling on his sock before speeding out to investigate.

* * *

Organza opened the door a crack.

All seemed clear.

Then she stuck out her head and peered around with smudgy black eyes.

All seemed clear.

Then she cautiously slid out and made for the stairs, where she was ambushed by the kitchen staff and pelted with mouldy waste food.

'Argh,' she said, spinning around wildly and retreating back to her room, leaving a trail of multicoloured slippers behind her.

* * *

Optional music track : 'Stereophonics - I'm Alright (You Gotta Go There To Come Back).'

Mars' scorched corpse flopped to one side.

Gen's stare remained locked on it as she pressed herself hard against the wall, as far away as possible.

After the shaking had subsided, the terrible noise that came with it had turned to a calm hum. There was a faraway clunk; Gen gasped.

After a while, there came a strange noise of suction, a bleep, and the escape pod's door swung open.

'Hmm,' said Gregarium, poking his head through. And then, 'Hello.' He noticed Mars. 'Hmm,' he said again. 'Miss, I am afraid you are making my ship rather unwell. Would you care to follow me?'

Gen was unsure; this man might not be safe. He only had one shoe on. However, she wanted to get as far away as possible from the dead body, and so reluctantly stepped out, leaving the head of her suit behind.

'Yyeess,' Gregarium said, ponderously. 'I think it would be better if we let him go. I'm sorry.'

Gen turned to face Mars for one last time. She blinked slowly. She felt numb, as if she had just woken up from a daytime snooze consisting of several nightmares. Everything seemed so unnaturally quiet now. She did not even have the energy to shed tears.

Gregarium closed the pod and placed his arm on her shoulder, gently steering her away. They travelled along a wide, gently rising, cylindrical corridor and up some steps until they arrived in a small room with a large, holographic screen on the wall they had entered through.

'Would you like to see him off?'

Gen nodded. Gregarium pointed to a large window opposite the screen, and she slowly made her way to it.

He pressed some keys.

Gen saw one of the tubes sticking out directly below her. There was a deep rumble and she saw the escape pod fired silently into the vast emptiness of space.

'WASTE SHUTE CLEARED.'

She pressed her hand against the glass and watched Mars depart forever. He had helped her save her life. Her head filled with dizzy tiredness and, releasing a small sigh, she collapsed.

* * *

When she awoke, it was in a very white room, filled with lots of fluorescent lights. Her head hurt. 'Ow,' she said, shielding her eyes with an arm. She was on a bed. The soft sheets beneath her were almost as dazzlingly bright as the lights. Her spacesuit had been removed and she was in her white pyjamas. She now also had the addition of large socks.

At that moment, the doctor entered. He had both shoes on. 'Ah,' he said, 'You're awake. How do you feel?'

'Ow,' Gen repeated. 'Where am I?'

'This is the White Room,' he explained, unhelpfully.

'My head hurts,' said Gen.

'Oh. Would you like me to leave you to sleep it off?'

'In here? No! I mean... no thank you. Er. I'm alright now. I think.'

'Right. Well. I hope your feet are warmer now. They were almost blue. Would you like me to show you around my ship? It may have occurred to you that you don't actually know who I am. I am Doctor Gregarium.' He proffered a hand. 'You are?'

She took his hand. 'Gen,' she said, gazing distractedly at his hair.

'Follow me, Gen,' he said, pulling her up to her feet. She was glad to be leaving the room. On her way out, she tripped over a light that protruded unnecessarily from the floor. 'Ow.'

She then found herself in a huge, open space, with a beige marble floor, a dark dome with a great iron framework for a roof, and lots of little doors lining the edges where the two met, leading off to the rest of the ship.

Gregarium scampered across this hallway to a door somewhere on the right. In her attempt to keep up with him, Gen found herself sliding uncontrollably in the wrong direction. Gregarium managed to grab her by the wrist just in time, and Gen then let herself be pulled the correct way.

'And there was me thinking that socks were such a good idea,' remarked the Doctor.

Optional music track: 'Radiohead - Where I End and You Begin.'

Chapter One

2005-08-16T17:25:00.000+01:00

Optional music track: 'Fleetwood Mac - Albatross.'

A flock of spacesheep waded through the weightless atmosphere, free and wild.

Gen had her nose pressed against the window. Sometimes she wished that she were a spacesheep. Sad as this may seem, it was a vast improvement on yesterday, when a cargo ship had floated by and she'd wished she was a crate of tinned whatever beans.

She watched the translucent, opalescent and rubber-like bodies of the spacesheep retreat into nothingness, their curious, glowing red eyes looking around and about them, tails trailing behind them like torn sheets of silk.

She, Gen, wanted to slip through the glass, and float dreamily after them. But she couldn't. Mostly because she'd die of asphyxiation anyway, but also because she was trapped in this horrible place, her stepstepmother's ship, with just herself for company. Maybe asphyxiation was a good thing, she thought horribly. Her face slid down the cold glass, making a wet path through the condensation that her warm breath had formed.

Her head now rested upon her bed: a thin, white sheet stretched tightly across a small, hard mattress, with an uncovered, blotchy yellow, dribble-stained pillow in a heap at one end. The rest of the room consisted also of a cold, metallic floor, the essential four metallic walls, a similar and highly unoriginal, low ceiling, and the afore-mentioned large, circular window. This was Her Room. And she hated it.

Once, Gen had spent six hours in her stepparent's room, organizing her stepstepmother's sixty-three pairs of fuzzy slippers, and she had gotten lost. She'd been thinking about how ridiculous her stepstepmother always looked with fuzzy slippers wedged all over into the fat of her chubby tail, and had taken a wrong turn out of the closet. The bed itself was so gigantic that it took Gen fifty-seven steps just to walk from one side to the other while she was straightening the sheets. There was a silver engraved post at each corner, three times as tall as Gen was. She had climbed one, when she was younger, to see what was at the top. Nothing was, except the spotlessly smooth ceiling, but when her stepstepmother had caught her up there little Gen had gotten told off and then slapped half a dozen times. She didn't dare touch the shiny poles after that, not even to pretend to dust them. Sometimes she daydreamed about what she would do if that soft pink room were hers, and all the fuzzy slippers too. As she lay there on her bed, Gen thought about how difficult it might be to climb bedposts while wearing slippers, and how unfair it was that she would probably never get the chance to try it and see.

* * *

Optional music track: 'The Chemical Brothers - My Elastic Eye.'

Meanwhile, Gen's stepstepmother and stepfather were currently a few rooms away, in a room that was filled with what appeared to be a jungle of plants, which had fibre optic lights running through their various stems, stalks, leaves and fronds; this room was filled with very little else, other than a few barely visible leather sofas. Gen's stepparents were positioned in what little space there was available near the doorway, and this was quite an achievement, considering their immense size.

Gen's stepfather, Mr. Gilt Humphrey Nousu, was a large, slug-shaped creature with walrus-like skin that had random tufts of hair protruding in various places covering his whole body, but with a layer of blubber at least thrice as thick as what the tusked animal would have, even if it were the biggest chocolate lover of its kind. His head was indefinable from the rest of his body (mostly due to a lack of neck), and made different from his rear end only by the large, shiny orange eyes and the massive, pointy-toothed mouth; and the fact that his entire upper half reared up (revealing his glistening orange belly), so that he could address his slaves to their faces rather than their knees, while at the same time seeming doubly huge and formidable. From the mass that was his upper half protruded small arms which ended in thin, crooked fingers, giving the general appearance of a pair of twigs stuck in either side of a very ugly snowman.

Organza, his most recent wife, the sixth after a line of many ultimately unsatisfactory creatures (including Gen's very own mother, who one day disappeared under suspicious circumstances), was very similar to her counterpart, only slightly bigger, and made ten times more scary, what with her having discovered human make-up and having a misplaced wispy, sand-coloured wig taped to her head (so that it didn't fall off). In her right twig-like hand was a small, cube-shaped electrical device, with a holographic screen projected vertically through a thin slit along the top. It currently displayed a solemn-faced, black haired boy who looked to be in white pyjamas, with various statistics and alien hieroglyphic symbols surrounding him. It was a slavekid card catalogue: a brilliant invention suited for the intergalactic human slave trade, with the idea being that you would browse through the selection of human slavekids offered, choose one, and then, in the hologram's place, a small card with all the necessary information would materialise. The owner would then go to his or her slave station, where the card would be inserted into a slot and read by the computer. After a few hours or so, the purchased child would arrive on the ship via the teleportation unit that stood to the right of the station. The computer would spit the card out, and, for as long as the owner had the card, he or she had complete legal control over the child. Trading was often done between owners as well, usually with the owners making a profit by selling the kid for more than it was originally worth in the catalogue.

Organza pursed her lips and considered the scrawny boy in restless silence. That his wife was in the same room with him, Gilt instinctively knew, meant that she wanted something. She leaned over his shoulder and said, 'Look at the hologram, husband. He's gorgeous!'

Gilt grunted. 'We have enough slaveboys.'

'I don't think we do, sweetheart.' His wife smiled at him with her large mouth and batted her spiky fake eyelashes.

'We do.'

'Not any like this one,' Organza murmured.

Her husband, glowering, rose up and grabbed the slavekid card catalogue out of her hand and threw it. It smashed against the floor and started to spit out irritating electronic hiccups. Organza put on her own high-gloss brand of petulance and made her huge, painted lips into a pinched frown.

Gilt turned away, feigning disgust, and maliciously crushed the contraption under his fat tail. Then he flicked it away as hard as he could, leaving skidmarks on the highly polished floor and scattering bolts and screws and loose wiring all over.

'What a mess,' he commented before shouting for his stepdaughter, 'Hydie!' Elsewhere, in her small bedroom, Gen heard and cringed. She hated them calling her that. 'Hydrogen Lythia Nousu! You worthless kid, where are you?'

His wife tsked. 'What?' he asked her. 'This disgracefully untidy spacelounge needs to be tidied!'

Shaking her head, Organza smiled a hideous smile at her husband and replied, 'You like it disgracefully untidy and you know it.'

He grunted and after a moment, said, 'What is the kid good for, eh?' Gen appeared in the doorway at that moment, standing unhappily, watching her stepparents. 'What is the kid good for,' her stepfather repeated, more loudly, 'if we can't order her pointlessly around? Eh, honey? Water the plants, Hydie. And then mop the ceilings. All of them.'

Gen looked around the room and thought to herself, they are fake plants. As her stepfather and his wife linked arms and waltzed clumsily out of the room, Gen noticed the pieces of wire and plastic strewn across the floor. When the adults were gone and she was sure they were gone, the little girl ran to pick up the pieces.

She pocketed them in her white, slave-style clothing for later, and then turned to face the multicoloured mass that was the fibre optic jungle. She scowled. It was a scowl towards the plants and their pointlessness partly, but mostly for her stepfather and stepstepmother. She loathed them enough as it was anyway, but the fact that they insisted on calling her Hydie really infuriated her. Such an ugly name from such ugly creatures.

In addition to that, the idea of kid cards made her sick. Gen was more or less treated as a slave herself, but at least she was allowed to roam relatively freely about the place (not that she'd want to), unlike the others. It was part of the rules and regulations of this guardianship law that had been put in place. Since her stepfather had married her mother in the knowledge that she had a child, as much as he'd tried to deny it, when her mother disappeared, he was forced to take responsibility for Gen. As a result, he and his wife made her life as miserable as they could.

She rarely saw the other slavekids, let alone spoke to them, because they were always warned to keep out of the way as much as possible, except for when the blob and his wife had visitors around and wanted to boast about the sheer number of their slaves, to prove how rich they were. And despite how much he and his wife disliked and mistreated the girl, Gen was still the master's child, practically royal when compared to the humble slavekids, and so the other children tended to leave her alone.

Sighing irritably, Gen made to climb through the colourful wilderness. Then, quite suddenly, there was a rumbling scream from outside the room. It seemed to be one of great agony, but Gen did her best to ignore it and avoid going to see what was going on, because her curiosity had got her into very painful trouble on various previous occasions. However, as hard as she tried to turn her attention back to the fibre optics, her curiosity did get the better of her, and she threw open the door and rushed outside into the spacious main hall, where the source of all the noise was located instantly.

The main hall was a vast area in the very centre of the ship and, apart from doors leading to downstairs rooms, some ugly ornaments lining the walls and a worn black rug, was taken up mostly by two sets of metallic stairs, each beginning either side of the hall and gently curving as they ascended, until they met in the centre and came into contact with a balcony-like platform that ran around the edge of the main hall several metres above the first floor, thus providing a means of entering the upstairs rooms.

Gen was clutching at the railings on the left, gazing down at the struggling mass below that was apparently her stepfather. She gasped.

Optional music track: 'The Chemical Brothers (again) - Out Of Control.'

He was spinning madly around, swinging his great tail dangerously and flailing his pathetic, tiny, useless little arms. Two slaveboys clung to his thick skin, tugging and tearing viciously at it, and at his sticky clumps and clusters of hair, pulling it out. Fluorescent green, viscous liquid oozed from his layered folds of fat. He was bleeding.

The slaveboys looked crazed, insane. Their eyes were wide and bloodshot, their teeth bared. Gen could tell that they were extremely tense just by looking at them: their muscles were stiffened, the veins in their small temples bulged, their hands extended like claws. They must have only just hit adolescence, and yet they suddenly carried so much strength, so much raw anger and desperation. They seemed greatly disturbed, spooked by something, something that had really upset them. Maybe they'd finally snapped under the pressure of slave work, Gen thought... but nothing like this had ever happened before. Their white clothes were smeared with the bright blood. They were eerily silent. They didn't cry out, but just tore and tore and tore...

Just then, Organza came sliding slimily in, with almost her entire body reared up off the ground, and screaming even louder than her husband. In her wake, dozens of miniature walrus-skinned slugs slithered in: the monsters' offspring.

'You useless slaves, stop those traitors!' shrieked their mother, slamming her full weight down on the metallic floor, and sending heavy vibrations throughout the ship.

But nobody watching moved, staring, deaf to the screaming, in wide-eyed horror.

'Curse you all! Curse you!' Organza, in desperation, flung her entire body accurately at one of her husband's attackers. The boy's body cracked unnaturally upon impact, and he dropped to the metallic floor, his red blood mingling with the green on his clothing; pale, cold and lifeless.

Organza's heavily powdered face distorted its painted features into an expression of smug satisfaction. Even the other boy had stopped to stare in horror, and Gen's stepfather took this opportunity to fling him off; he landed by his friend's dead corpse.

The smaller slugs circled the boys, threatening to engulf the survivor, but their father parted them by slithering up to the boy, his bleeding upper half reared. He winced with pain. His children retreated and watched expectantly.

'This isn't the first time I have had to deal with disobedient humans,' he said. Gen could have sworn she saw him flash her a glance; her stomach jolted. 'I am not sympathetic towards those who defy me. You will all do well to take that into consideration. This insolent creature shall now be dealt with.'

A horrifying realisation then clicked into place in Gen's mind. A terrible scream then invaded her senses, a scream from the past that had haunted her to this very day. Then she understood. She fled from the platform, and back into the jungle room. She tore one of the fibre optic plants from the great mass and ran back out into the main deck again.

'Remember this,' said her stepfather, levering himself even further back, preparing to issue a fatal strike to the weak, quivering, cowering boy curled up under his shadow.

With the electronic plant still in one hand, Gen vaulted clumsily over the railings with the other and, falling down towards her stepfather's head, almost inconceivably quickly, she brought back the plant in an arc with her arm, and then swung it rapidly forward, feeding the side of her stepfather's skull a hard, harsh blow.

Sparks leapt from the plant as the stunned monster toppled sideways, and Gen hit the ground hard, badly twisting her ankle.

Then chaos broke out. Nothing, at that point, could have stopped it.

The offspring advanced towards the boy and Gen, enraged at this injustice, determined to have their revenge and finish them off. Their mother issued another concert of screaming and rushed to her husband's side.

He was dead.

Then, quite unexpectedly to all, the other slavekids ran to the aid of the boy and Gen. One girl, a few years older than Gen, kicked one of the slugs from Gen's face, and pulled her up to her feet. She had a dangerous glint to her eye and, despite the night's events, still managed to curl her lips into a mischievous grin.

Gen herself chased away a devious slug that tried to approach the girl from behind, but then had to limp bitterly to the side, out of the way as much as she could, as her ankle screamed out in agony.

Organza momentarily glanced and looked pained at the body that had been her husband, and then took up her rage once more and shouted at her children.

'Stop her! Stop her! Kill her!' This last instruction, to be fair, was more the rage speaking than Organza's own mind. Having her stepstepdaughter killed would remove all opportunities for later torturing the girl vengefully, for making little Hydie feel the deepest, most poignant regrets for what she had done. That, and also there were the tax deductions, although her own children were by then so numerous that the loss of Hydrogen's share would mean little. 'Kill her,' Organza squealed with all her rampant hatred. Her offspring struggled to move around, through, and over the mosh of slavekids.

Optional music track: 'Thin Lizzy - Jailbreak.' *

Gen looked at the boy by her side, wanting to ask him what had just happened. 'Faster,' he was saying under his breath. 'Faster, faster, come on...' Gen ran as fast as she could, limping clumsily; as they ran, Gen regained some sense of herself and began to feel increasingly sharp pains in her ankle. She felt a deep panic seeping closer and closer, perhaps contracted from some of the other children, but before it arrived she was able to speak. 'What are we going to do?' she managed to ask.

The slaveboy looked at her as if she were thick. 'We-' he began, 'we are going to run.'

'But to wh-'

'Just run!'

Gen ran. They all ran. Somewhere behind her Gen could hear the familiar rotational slickness of her stepsiblings' skateboards, which some of them must have resorted to using in desperation. The skaterslugs annoyed her to no end. When she had been younger, the slimy creatures had circled her on them, taunting her human form, her thin, dirty blonde hair, her pale eyes and her few freckles. Sometimes in her nightmares the skaterslugs would ride around and around, pulling brilliant tricks they could merely practice clumsily in real life. They even wore little helmets, she recalled, shivering. In those dreams Gen could never hear what they were saying. She would chase after the skateboards, for a reason she never understood, but she could not catch up.

Thinking about her nightmares was upsetting, but it distracted Gen from her ankle, from her guilt, and from the chaos that was chasing her. Could any nightmare really be worse than what was happening right now? The actions and of those two boys had caused a massive upheaval, a mini revolution on the ship. The humans appeared to be winning, but that's not to say that they didn't have their losses. The casualties were dragged to the sides of the hall and up the stairs out of the way, with those still active doing their best to protect them and each other.

Organza, too mortified and aghast to do anything about it, hurried off to her room, leaving her children to sort things out.

'Look out!' someone shouted. Slavekids rarely spoke, and Gen had never heard any of them shout before. Her companion ducked and pulled her down with him. She turned her head to see one of her stepsiblings trying to skateboard up the curved wall of the corridor, perhaps in an attempt to overtake the rushing slavekids. It wasn't working.

'As long as we stay out in the corridors and keep running,' one of the slavekids said, out of breath and holding his side, 'they can't trap us.'

Gen thought about this. 'But they will just keep chasing us. We can't,' she realised, 'run forever.'

'Then we'll fight.'

'Fight!?' The thought frightened her. She knew she stood no chance against her stepsiblings. Multiple experiences had taught her this.

'Fight!' The other slavekids were shouting it now too. At the corner ahead the crowd of them slammed to a halt and fell over themselves trying to get at an enemy, any enemy. Their fury was unthinking.

Five of the alien slugs had succeeded in heading off the corridor from the other direction. There was a near-nonexistant moment of hesitation, during which the enemy looked menacingly and hard at the slaves, daring them to keep up their frenzied chanting, and the slaves milled anxiously, their chant dying away as they watched the row of mean-looking aliens in front of them. Then one slavekid ran at the figure nearest him, knocked her off her board, and proceeded to punch her in the face.

Many skateboards, not to mention toes and wrists and fingernails, were broken in the crush of bodies. Gen was nearly smothered by all the pushing, fighting slavekids. They shoved and shouted around her, and her only concern became to shove back and not get hurt.

'Gen! Gen,' someone was shouting her name. She couldn't tell who it was until he grabbed her elbow and turned her around to face him. 'Come with me.'

She couldn't help but comply. Anything to get out of here, away from this loud, chaotic horror.

'You killed him,' the boy said to her.

Gen saw his lips move but couldn't hear him. 'What? What are you doing?' She had to shout to hear her own self.

The boy was using his shoe to pry up the tiling of the floor. All the others were too busy tearing at each other, kicking, biting, and otherwise drawing blood, to notice anything else going on. Gen stood nervously, holding the wall, watching this stranger hack into the floor. He had a tattoo on his shoulder of three alien numerals and a letter. The same code was microbioeletronically branded onto, one of his teeth, and his left patella. If he ever put a single toe outside the boundaries set by his owner, the cardkid Authorities would know about it. When there was a hole the right size, he took her hand and lifted her down into it. He climbed in after her and pulled the loose tiles back overhead.

'You killed him,' he repeated. 'That was ... it was brave of you.'

'Who are you? What are we doing? What's going on?'

The boy didn't answer at first, but walked along under the floor, climbing over pipes and around machinery, helping Gen to follow him. When they stopped, he sat down on a fuse box and she sat down next to him.

'Call me Mars. You like to be called Gen, right?'

She nodded. It was the name she called herself in her head. How did he know?

'How's your ankle? You can't stay here. Mistress O will kill you, and not just once either.'

'You mean my stepstepmother?' asked Gen, knowing that he did and knowing that he was perfectly right.

'What can I do?'

'Leave.'

Gen had been frightened, with intervals of being very shocked and quite terrified, from the moment she'd looked down and seen her stepfather being attacked, but the way this slaveboy casually suggested that she escape the ship inspired a discomforting combination of immense fear and at the same time, a great unfounded hope which pained her soul more than anything ever had.

'Could I?' she spluttered, looking into his eyes and imagining her dearest dream come close enough to touch. 'How?'

'You can. I can't, but I can show you how. But you need oxygen, and you'll have to steal it. Probably as soon as possible, while that ruckus is still going on up there.'

'Show me what to do.'

'Follow me.'

They continued under the flooring, in the dark, for what felt like miles. Gen's ankle alternated between a chill numbness and a hot, throbbing ache.

'Where am I going?'

'That's up to you. I'll show you how to-'

'You can't come with me?'

'Gen,' he said, 'I'd be- No. I can't. Not unless I want my skin fried right off my bones.'

Gen tried to think. The starcharts and planet directories, she knew from watching the captain and his mates on the spacedeck, were kept in the main data network and copied into both of the back up files. A paper map would have been easier to get her hands on, less likely for anyone to miss, but unfortunately, paper had been nonexistent in Gen's world ever since one of the more intelligent slavekids had somehow smuggled in a whole package of alphabet flashcards. Gilt and Organza had reported the boy to the Slavekid Card Authorities when they found out. All they had done in response was restate the well-known fact that literate slavekids were obvious risks, and that the couple had read and signed all the paperwork necessary to absolve the Authorities of blame.

Gen would have to find a card disk and copy the starcharts herself, if she couldn't get into the backup files. But a thought struck her then, closely followed by another which completely justified it. Well, almost completely.

What if I left without any starcharts?

And: Even if I did make a copydisk of them, what would I read it on?

All the handheld computers were tightly tied up with five or six layered passwords, to keep the slavekids from interfering with the network systems on the ship. The only way into the system involved her stepstepmother in an obliging mood, the ships' captain, and the head engineer specialist as well as his assistant, in that order, carefully timed. There was no way Gen would be able to manage that, not with all the lies on a spacetrader's tongue.

Mars told her to stay under the floor while he checked out an oxygen tank. When he came back for her he had in his hands a space suit that was too big for her and a crowbar. 'Come on,' he said, and they both ran carefully through the corridors, avoiding the crew, keeping quiet. Gen was unsure of where she was. The spaceship was bigger than she knew.

They came to a door, and the boy held the spacesuit out for her. 'They won't recognise you. I'll program the spacepod before you leave the terminal. Hurry.'

Gen pulled the suit over her head and tried to roll up the sleeves. 'But where will I go? What will I do?'

'Just get away. Never come back, or you're toast. You'll be fine. Here.'

'What is it?'

'Lucky. Now go.'

Gen gripped the flat triangular pendant in her hand and stared at Mars. 'Go,' he repeated, taking her shoulder and pushing her towards the door. 'Get in, buckle all the straps, and you'll be out of here before you know it.'

'Wait. I don't know where I'm going. I don't know what to do-' She grabbed his arm and held it. 'Don't stay. Come with me.'

'It'll be too dangerous.'

She paused, her eyes still locked on his. 'So?'

There was a sudden noise just around the corner. Mars panicked, took Gen's elbow, and they both climbed into the spacepod. Once they were strapped tightly in, the slave boy pulled a few levers and twisted one knob after another. Gen watched him for a moment. Then she put her head back, told herself that she would never see her stepstepmother again, closed her eyes, and cried.

Optional music track: 'Fuel - Falls On Me.'

*'Tonight there's gonna be a jail break/somewhere in this town' has been changed, for the purposes of this story, to: 'Tonight there's gonna be a jail break/somewhere on this spaceship'. Thank you.

Testing, 1 2 5.

2005-08-16T16:53:00.000+01:00

Amelia lives in a giant teapot with a family of penguins.

Testing testing instestines.

Everything seems to be in order.