All the King's Horses Pt. 02

Victor blurred forward with that blink and you'll miss it vampire superhuman speed. One second, on the far side of the screen. The next, he was gripping the man who had appeared out of thin air and lifted him up by the collars of his robes. DeLancy's legs kicked and his eyes widened as he dropped his loofa. "What the fuck?" Vicky growled, his eyes glowing red. "What the hell are you playing at, you pompous little-"

"I didn't do anything!" DeLancy said, grinning down at Vicky. "But this is hilarious." He glanced at the screen. There was a flash and Tiff yelped --finding that the strange, bathrobes wearing man was now standing beside her. He cocked his head as he looked down at her. "Very interesting." He leaned forward. "Enjoy dying gloriously, my poor little bioweapon."

He took her hand and leaned forward to kiss her knuckles. Tiff had been so shocked and confused by everything that happened that she would have been sitting there, gawping, if DeLancy had done anything but that. Enough creepers had tried to smootch her knuckles without her permission in her life that Tiff's instincts kicked right on.

She kicked him in the nuts.

Hard.

DeLancy's eyes bugged out of his head. His face puckered. He fell to his knees. Wheezed.

And vanished with a flash of light.

"Holy shit," Bryce whispered. "You just kicked God in the balls."

"What. Is. Happening!?" Vicky asked, standing up, her hands spreading. Bryce tapped at the screen and the window shifted to a perfect view of Vicky, so it looked like he was leaning up against the window sill, looking at Tiff. She walked towards him, then grabbed onto the sill, glaring into his eyes. "Victor!"

"Tiffany..." He whispered, slowly. "Y-You weren't...this isn't a Harrower trick?"

"No!" Tiff shouted. Then, tears brimming. "Y-You're okay."

Victor put his hand over his mouth. "What happened -- Corporal, report." He looked at Bryce, who stood and nodded.

"Well, we found a ship drifting in deep space, unclaimed, international," Bryce said, sounding faintly awestruck. "We found her cryogenic capsule inside of it. Uh, I didn't know you knew the General." He whispered to Tiff.

"He was way more broody back then," Tiff whispered, wiping at her eyes. "Or do you still do the standing on a roof in a trench-"

"Ahem!" Victor coughed, looking aside.

"While the right of communication is enshrined in the constitution," Kfap said, quietly. "I have to alert you that the quantum entangled link between us and headquarters is currently reaching its bit limit. You will need to break contact within the next three minutes."

Tiff gulped, then stammered. "Are you a dad now?" She asked, stepping forward. "Are...are you married?"

Victor looked aside. "Yeah. His name is Trevor. H-He, um...actually...helped to break the curse on me. It's, uh-"

"Right. Got it," Tiff whispered, her voice husky. Raw. "Cool. Great. Love it. Bye." She said, then turned away from the screen as it turned off. She felt like a door had closed up tight behind her -- one that had been swung open for a moment. Through that door, she had seen a chance for her and Victor to be more than just two strangers standing on either side of a pane of glass. The glass had pushed back hard, sending her skidding into a future that was his past -- a future that was full of gods and aliens and monsters she had never imagined. The light of the room shifted subtly as the projection of the office had been closed.

Bryce was silent for a few moments. "So, um..."

"Wait, did he say Trevor?" Tiff asked, jerking her head up.

"Yeah," Bryce said.

The room was silent for a while.

"Okay," Tiff said, her cheeks darkening. She turned and put her hands on Bryce. "Enough of this. Fuck this! What do you do for fun on this ship?"

"Well, there's always a good hard fuck," Bryce said, grinning at her. "If you're in the mood?" He asked, cocking his head. Tiff felt like she had been smacked with flaming palms. Her cheeks went even darker and she gulped.

"Uh, no, I prefer to, uh, I mean, anything else?" She asked, looking aside.

"You do know no one is going to call you a slut or anything," Bryce said, standing. "Unless you're into that. But there is something else we do when we're not ready for fucking. Or when we want to fuck something really weird." He held his hand out to her again. Again, Tiff took his fingers and felt the warm strength of his alien grip. But this time, she didn't feel guilty about the fluttering feeling it put in her belly. She stepped closer to him and grinned, shyly.

"Lead along, Bryce," she said.

***

"Your fun is a closet?" Tiff asked, her brow furrowing as she looked at the closet that Bryce had led her too. It was situated in what was a kind of big common area, where the crew of the ship came to relax, talk, and fiddle with screens and their portable computers. Just by glancing around the room, Tiff could barely tell that any work was being done at all -- until she took a second, deeper look. If you squinted and perked your ears, you could see that among the people laying around in comfortable sofas, or seated at tables, there were glowing projections of light and pattern that looked like schematics of the ship, or solar systems. Discussions of railgun impacts and cloaking strategies dominated. It was work. It was just...not...worked at.

"Yup," Bryce said, grinning as he opened another closet door. There were at least twenty of them, all niched into the wall. The ones he opened weren't empty. Instead, they had a rather comfy looking chair with a large domed hood over it that looked as if it was kind of like one of those domes put on the back of hairdressers, that gushed water out and felt amazing. Wires led into it and tubes that were full of red fluid.

"I thought the future didn't have closets, considering how many gay people are walking around," Tiff said. "Not that I'm bitter my ex-boyfriend is married to a dude. Like, honestly, Victor and I hurt eachother way more than we ever actually made each other happy. But...the sex was real good..." She blushed. "I mean-" She shook her head. "Fuck."

Bryce snickered. "You're talking to the alien who gets high on human pheromones. Knowing you fucked General Enache isn't going to phase me."

"Yeah, it phases me," Tiff said, putting her hands over her face. "Ugh. Okay. How do we have fun in a closet?"

"You sit down," Bryce said, and as Tiff lowered herself into the closet, her face all scrunched up and suspicious, he lowered the dome down. It settled around her head and Bryce said. "And we turn it on."

Nothing happened. Tiff's brow furrowed as she felt a very faint tingle against her scalp. "Nothing's doing. ...please don't tell me a tiny tingle against your scalp is your idea of fun." She said, grabbing the dome, about to push it up. But Bryce put his hand on her fingers, stopping her.

"You need to let it work," he said, quietly. "You've got that Hunter defense going on. Relax it."

Tiff frowned. Her brow furrowed and she closed her eyes tightly, trying to take the defenses that her Hunter spirit filled her with and lower it. The pressure against her temples started to grow hotter and harder -- and then pain spiked through her. She grabbed the dome and shoved it up. "Auuugh!" She growled, her fingers clenching on it. Metal squeaked and squealed and the dome snapped off, blood spurting into the air and flecking against her cheeks as the wires were snapped and cut. She shoved herself away from the seat, then backed away from it, panting. "What the fuck, Bryce?"

Bryce looked at the chair as the pressure on the blood started to taper off.

"Are you okay?" A shy, feminine voice spoke from behind her. Tiff looked back and saw a woman made entirely out of cut, glimmering crystals, which glowed and caught the light of the room like the candles in a chandelier.

"Y-Yeah..." Tiff stammered, looking at the woman's face. It was human, shockingly human in fact, save that the edges frilled out into crystalline quills rather than the normal shape of a human head. This gave her an almost frilled look. "I'm Tiff."

"The Hunter, right?" the crystal woman asked. "Bryce you- she has an immunity to vampire mind control powers. And most mind control powers. Of course the Chimerstry-Booth won't frigging work on her."

"It's a-" Tiff looked at the torn up seat. "It's more of that fangy shit!"

"We, uh, prefer the term fangtech," the crystalline girl said. "Oh, my name is Song of the Eternal Beauty." She smiled, holding her hand out to Tiffany. Tiff took it, nodding. Her cheeks darkened.

"I should get a shower..." she said, touching the blood on her cheek. "Eesh..." She trailed off, looking at the seat again, then at Bryce, who was looking at her with a little shake of his head. "S-Sorry for busting up the chair."

"No, I'm the idiot," Bryce said, taking her shoulder. "Come on. There's a shower back at your room -- though, it's going to be replicated water." He grinned at her. "If you want to get pissy about it being fake water. I once had to do bodyguard duty for a diplomat who refused to bathe unless it was real water, you know?"

Tiff snorted. "What a dink."

"Tell me about it," Bryce said. "And hey, maybe well figure out how to drop your defenses for the C-booths!" He shot a grin at her. "I have this amazing program I like to run in them."

"If they work the way I think they do," Tiff said, remembering her own run ins with vampires who had mastered the arts of Chimerstry -- the world reshaping and twisting around her, her worst nightmares brought to life by their illusory arts, trying to batter past her defenses to influence her mind directly. "Then I'm betting it's something to do with sex?"

Bryce drew himself up, sniffing. "My good Tiffany Winters. I don't only think about sex." He grinned. "Sometimes, I also think about violence. It's called Xanaxtia, the Sorcerer Queen. In it, you're adventurers who are dropped straight into a jungle, ruled by the mad Sorcerer Queen, Xanaxtia. And then-"

He sold her on the whole thing all the way back to her quarters...and Tiff had to admit, even if it was only to herself: It sounded fun as hell.

***

"Sorry for your tour being an unending parade of depressing facts and shitty toys that don't work," Bryce said, shrugging slightly as he stood outside the door to Tiff's room. Tiff stood in that doorway, looking inwards, at the chamber that she was going to live in for...for the foreseeable future. She had no idea what she was going to do in this amazing future world. Vampires were her friends now. Werewolves were part of society. The stars were open and the gods walked among men in shower caps and bathrobes. She bit her lip, slightly, not turning back to face Bryce.

"So, uh, the shower is just in the corner," Bryce said. "For the blood you got on yourself."

What am I going to do with my life? Tiff thought.

"I mean, I'd offer to-"

"Bryce," Tiff said, turning to face him, frowning. "You all seemed kinda weirded out that the We were in this area. Right?"

Bryce nodded, his ears twitching up slightly. "Yeah. The We come from near the Galactic Core. Since they don't have any centralized home planet, they just drift through space. But they still collect near one another in a blobby space roughly fifty, sixty lightyears wide. We're about a hundred light years away from that. This is mostly the former territory of the Narine Union before we kicked their asses." He grinned, slightly. "The closest polity that's showing any kind of muscle in this area, beyond various non-aligned minor powers in Neutral Space, are the Capellans and the Omin-Imperium. The Imperium is mostly menacing with their fleet, while the Capellans are just trying to sell guns to everyone."

Tiff nodded. "Can I...look at the...sensor wibbles and camera bloops this ship picks up, or is that top secret or-"

"Sure you can," Bryce said, nodding. "I mean, who are you going to leak them too? Soviet spies?" He grinned at her.

"The Soviet Union, like, crished apart, like, when I was a baby, dude," Tiff said, stepping backwards. "Send it to my fancy space computer, Byrce."

"You got it!" Bryce said -- and the doors hissed shut. Tiff bit her lip and imagined, for just a moment, opening the door, then grabbing the sleek alien and dragging him into the room and having him scrub her back. It was the future. All her friends were dead. Victor was married to a guy named Trevor. Why not fuck some hot alien stud? But something inside of Tiff still shied away -- a reflexive, coiling, snake part of her. Tiff crossed her arms over her chest and walked over to the corner of the room, where the shower door opened. She wriggled out of her clothing, sighing as the snake part of her hissed in her ear.

They'll all laugh at you. Stupid primitive barbarian from the 90s. Bet the vampires are all thinking about killing you and sucking you dry.

Tiff closed her eyes as she stepped into the shower. Up against the snake, came the Hunter spirit in her. It didn't use words, exactly. Instead, it was the mental image of her hands gripping Sebastian by the jaws, then pulling up and down at the same time, until his jaw snapped off and his head tore backwards and she was sprayed by his thick, black vitae -- vampire blood glopping against her face as she roared out her feral victory.

Snakey was the voice that had whispered to her ever since she had been old enough to know where Tiffany Winters fit into the picture: Too tall to be cute, too skinny to be swole (was swole still a word?), with hair that never decided if it was straight or curly, and tits that were more suggestions than anything. She stood under the faucet of the ship and water that was the perfect temperature and as crystal clear as the mountain springs poured over her shoulders and slid along her back, dripped down her thighs. She closed her eyes as snakey hissed and Hunter roared and wondered where Tiff was in any of that.

Afterwards, she spoke, hesitantly: "So, uh, Kfap, can you...make me clothes?" She asked, picking up the discarded jeans and white T-shirt that she had woken up in.

"Of course," Kfap said. "Place the clothing into the replicator and I'll shunt them down for recycling."

The wall niche opened and Tiff watched as the clothing she put in was whisked away, melting through the bottom of the replicator as if it had turned into liquid. "How does this thing work?" she asked.

"Lycanthropes are capable of pulling extra mass out of subspace," Kfap said, her voice chipper as, rather than closing, the door remained open. Silvery beams of light shot from the corners of the replicator box, and they seemed to sweep and paint clothing into existence. She watched the silvery lines as Kfap continued to speak. "A replicator uses the same fundamental process -- but rather than creating muscle masses from gravitational interference patterns created by lunar interactions, replicators create anything that is desired. On planetary surfaces, this means that replicator capacity is based on the phase of the moon and their numbers, size, and relative proximity to the planet. This is why the DeeDee has a dyad of quantum singularities contained in the engineering housing, producing lunar interference for our shipboard replication needs."

"...this is the clothing you chose for me?" Tiff asked, dragging out the grungy looking T-shit. Plaid. Thick leather jacket. Tattered jeans that looked like they should have come straight from Wisconsin. Her nose wrinkled -- and her eyes blurred. "I hate grunge."

"Oh, I, uh, I took the design from some of the surviving films of the era," Kfap said as Tiff buried her face against the clothing.

"No, it's great," Tiff said, drawing her face away from them. "I-I'm crying because...you...you want me to feel good, and you tried, and that's good. D-Does that make sense?"

"Yes, yes it does Tiff," Kfap said as Tiff started to wriggle into the clothing. It all fit perfect and felt comfortable as hell. Durable. Tough. Unfashionable. She slid her arms into the jacket, tugging it on around her shoulders.

"Aren't you, like, a computer, though?" Tiff asked. "Don't computers not have emotions? Like Data?"

"It was actually discovered, before the advent of artificial intelligence, that emotions are vital for decision making processes. The idea of an intelligence without emotional understanding is rather silly," Kfap said, cheerfully. "Though, there was a vigorous debate about what kind of emotional expression should be used -- there are multiple thought-forms that are eminently effective and healthy. The commonest, what you would call 'neruotypical', is just one such possibility. Others included-" Kfap stopped as Tiff's face scrunched up. "...sorry, I...my own intelligence and my fore-bearers in the realms of artificial intelligence are some of my favorite pieces of historical trivia."

Tiff snickered. "No, it's cool." She sat down. "It makes sense a computer would be a computer nerd, right?"

She opened up the screen and blinked as she found that she was looking at a perfect replica of the flat green background, the gray bar along the bottom, the huge circular icons, the tiny little computer box, the little manila envelopes, the huge triangular cursor...she was looking at her Windows 98 operating system. She swore she could even hear the whirring sound of a computer fan. "Thanks Kfap..." she whispered. Looking close, she saw that one of the files was listed as Surveillance Data. Double clicking it bring the file up and she saw it had several movie files and image files in it. Clicking through them, she saw that the ship had basically taken thousands of pictures, looking out in every direction. Some of the pictures showed things in washed out, unnatural colors -- infrared, X-ray, something called 'neutrinos.'

But Tiff didn't focus on what was actually there.

Instead, she leaned on her hands and looked at as many pictures, as many simultaneous videos, as possible. They played in tiny Media Player boxes, whirring by as she let her eyes slowly go out of focus. She waited...

And the Hunter growled. When it spoke, it spoke in monosyllables. In grunts of 'rip' and 'tear.' And...

There.

Tiffany clicked on the image, brought it up, and nodded. "Can you mark this bit right here, Kfap?" She asked, tapping the screen.

"Of course, Tif...an..." Kfap trailed off.

Tiff grinned. "Let me guess: You just saw something?"

"How the hell did you spot that?" Kfap whispered. Hearing a computer sound mildly awed made Tiff feel as if she had found a new, centered place in her body. She leaned backwards in her seat, propping her hands behind her neck as she looked up at the ceiling, waiting for Kfap to continue. "You just spotted, in less than thirty seconds, a neutrino spike that is barely distinguishable from cosmic background radiation -- but I've done a double and triple check: There's a communication signal concealed in this. How did...but...I..."

"I'm the Hunter," Tiff said, shrugging. "I spot things."

"I am going to begin studying more about our records on the Hunter. I have contacted the bridge crew and you have been politely requested to meet them in the conference room on deck 12." Kfap said. "I shall direct you."

Tiff grinned and sprang to her feet.

"How the hell did we miss this?" Tobias muttered. He was seated at the bottom of the table, frowning at the printed out images and the readouts. The rest of the bridge crew appeared to not actually be the entire bridge crew. There was Tobias, the big black guy that smelled to Tiff like a werewolf, Sebastian, the blue skinned chick, and Dr. Galadrial the space elf. Sebastian spoke up first.