| |
|
"And while we're waiting, how about a touch of gruesome death pour encourager les autres? Is that a small ripple of interest I see stirring the denizens of this rather grubby bar?"
(A botlet hastily switches off its e-ciggy and scutters back to work, picking bits of crisps out of the Space Bar's unlovely carpet. The Redshirt whips out a tea-towel and starts polishing glasses with furious concentration.)
"All right then ... our non- and late-voting victims shall die in alpabetical order. To the cabin of Lionheart! If anyone can find it, that is."
The Captain Priestess grabs a bottle of Martian blue vodka from behind the bar and crosses herself with it reverently, before chugging the contents in a single long swallow. Even T.O.D.D. looks on in admiration.
"AAAAHHH! Holy water!" she cries, and, revitalised, leads the baying mob to the space station's medlab. She has just remembered why Lionheart has not yet appeared in the bar with the rest of the ship's passengers and crew.
She and her followers burst in through the doors of the cold, sterile chamber where specimens are kept. Hastily averting their eyes from the Captain's Museum of Disobedience collection, the crowd shuffles to a halt when it reaches one of the dustiest and oldest specimens of all, high up in a glass-fronted cabinet with a small brass plaque reading "Mr. G. Lionheart (semi-deceased)"
The Captain Priestess reaches up and pulls down what looks suspiciously like a brain in a jar.
The grey matter, floatng quiescently in nutrient fluid, seems to pulse gently as she stares it down.
"So, Mr. I'm Just a Brain In A Jar How Can I Be Expected To Vote Lionheart! I knew you were going to be a troublemaker from the first time I set eyes on you. It may have taken fifty years, but now you're showing your true colours, you miscreant! What have you got to say for yourself?"
The brain throbs slightly, but does not answer. The Captain Priestess's narrowed eyes swim in and out of focus as she watches it.
"Dumb insolence!" she cries, and dashes the jar to the floor, where it smashes, splattering the onlookers with sticky goo and elderly nutrient fluid.
"But how do we know whether he was MAFIA or not?" asks a crowd member, perspicaciously.
"Reading the entrails of a sacraficial victim is one of the first things I learned in Saturn Ladies' College for the Daughters of the Clergy," answers the Captain Priestess. "Seeing as how there aren't any entrails, I'll work with what I've got."
She studies the pattern, or rather splat, made by the brain on the floor of the medlab for a few minutes, before turning to the assembled crowd and speaking her verdict.
"Not to worry! Although this entity was not MAFIA, neither was he essential innocent personnel. In fact, he was the ship's Martyr"
The crowd looks mildly disappointed. The Captain frowns.
"Well, don't just stand there looking mildly disappointed! We have justice to serve and death to mete out.! Well I do, anyway. To the hidey-hole of that tardy Coyote boy!" |
|
|
