The following is a work of fiction intended for adult entertainment. The author here by declares it a work of public domain to be used in whole or in part by any and all in any and all medium.

-ROOK-



‘ V IS FOR VAVAVOOM ‘

CHAPTER ONE

“We live in moments, and die in years.” V.V.

The baguette shaped race car skidded on the rain slick moon lit gas lamp splattered gun blue cobble stones. It’s furious narrow tires coughing shrill barks of mindless furry at the latticed gibbous pale eye above, the long nosed engine howling its searing vibrancy hovering on the brink of awareness as the abused elements congealed in crusted time. In its open cock pit wearing her leather helmet and goggles the grime bedashed face of Victoria “Vavavoom” Vroom snarled as she fought the laws of physics and wrenched the car back down on all four spindle wheels, the long sheet metal rolled spine wincing as rivets puckered in silver dimpled flesh.

The hair pin corner behind her Victoria reached for and yanked out the long handled brass tube radio microphone in the polished walnut dash there by activating it and screamed a laconic reply down its gray thick coiled wire, the wind whipping away the rest of her breath out of the cock pit as it did the tattered tail of her lucky scarf that tumbled and flagged in the cauldron bubbling slipstream wake of the demonic wailing craft.

If there was any further reply from the worried tuxedoed men of her pit crew, its concern was this time lost either in throat or in the interference of the large brown stone buildings now lining the deserted wet night city street, for the large round brass meshed speaker in the dash made no audible retort, and Victoria snapped the radio tube back into place thus silencing her end of the conversation as well.

She was easily several blocks ahead of the pack of remaining cars and closing fast on the two lead racers who kept a tantalizing flash of moon silvered and street lamp reddened flashes of their sleek blunt rear ends and muddy rooster tails at every winding jarring butt sliding corner of the torturous race course.

‘It will be in the wharfs,’ she thought grimly to her self, ‘I’ll over take them at the end of the warehouse district. No spectators there. No long rows of bleachers with political bunting holding up the umbrella roofed pens of sheep, cheering at their up raised bottles of mind killer as Ultra Conservative Party Constables pace back and forth trying to resist the urge to attack them. Everyone on their best behavior for the big city night race, even me, politely going to my predetermined death, with blissful smiling ignorance.’ She thought of all the photographers she had smiled and saluted as she had shimmed into her car just a few hours ago, and how her large smiling face would look so odd the next morning on the front page over her obituary, so contrasting, and yet no one would really notice or remark anything about it. Beneath the wooden dash panel and just behind the tin fire wall, the little bomb the Ultra Conservative Party had hidden ticked away the seconds of her life, and theirs. ‘Though they didn’t realize yet the latter.’

Victoria had discovered the small viperous bundle of explosives quiet by accident during a last minute pre-race inspection of a spark plug that hadn’t sounded as if it was firing properly to her learned sensitive ear. She had found where ‘they’ had clumsily wired the radial clock timer into her electrical system, and it had given her pause. “First my lover, then my brother, and now me - would her father be next?” She had angrily snipped the bare copper wire of the explosive, but then calmly re-connected it, even improving its lethal umbilical cord to her vehicle’s purring hart. An idea had formed.

There had already been numerous attempts upon her life over the past two months, though always in such a clandestine manor as to make direct confirmation that they had indeed been more than creepy accidents and a true conscious attempt upon her life virtually impossible to trace into visible form upon the phantom air. This heavy handed sledge hammer attempt here and now seemed to be almost an open public admission of a growing desperation to silence her on going activities of investigation into her beloved ones dubious deaths. It was inevitable that they should succeed eventually, why not now, here, and get it over with? She doubted her inquires could proceed any further, already more and more of the political pundits where becoming increasingly hostile in their grimy public finger pointing. Gouging out slurs against her as innuendos as being little more than personal agenda based muck raking upon her fathers favored part. In truth her father had risen up in leaps and bounds to the third highest position in the Ultra Conservative Party in part due to her brother’s tragic death. Her father had long been an opponent of the voracious corruption of the U.C.P working with in its collective fold, as no other political party truly existed out side its shadow, just as her brother had often voice descent from with out its labor manacled spectrum. Her brother’s death had created a small public wave of scandal that had propelled her father into the higharchy of the U.C.P. before the masses out cry had been quickly drowned out in rhetoric before any real changes in party or platform had occurred. In fact, her fathers appointment had been done more in an act to gag the populous demands than in any true concession of the party to cleanse its self from with in. Still her father continued to battle the massive thuggish tactics of the U.C.P. as he had ever before and she had reluctantly found herself stepping into her brothers vacant small niche and continuing what had been his almost off hand over the shoulder disdain of the party from with out. But it had gone as far as she could reasonably take it and remain at her own personal liberty. The party had effectively walled her into a dead end. Perhaps as a ghost, dead and forgotten, she might fare better and be able to forage ahead?

Victoria risked a glance at the large round rain flecked glass faced brass rimmed clock embedded in her polished dash, its black iron lacy webbed hands ticked now in sync with its murderous secret sibling lurking just beyond her right knee.

She poured into the warehouse district with only seconds to spare. Her large fender mounted review mirror showed no head lights in its vibrating glare of the darkness behind her, and she could now make out clearly the two lead cars tail lights daemon eyed blazing fiercely in their deadly tango up a head. She needed them to see the crash, so there would be no doubts. Her head lights would already be catching their chiseled attentions as they light up their review mirrors in an acidic yellow blue white glow. Even now she could just make out the whipping craning neck of one drivers rain slicked leather helmet pitch to the side in order to squint a quick confirmation of her rapid approach.

The explosion shook the entire block cracking cinder foundations of towering wet black bough hulks of shuttered storage sheds hundreds of yards away from its epicenter. It drowned out the roar of the lead two racers and rippled the paint into long fingered sprays of ones snub nosed tin rear end. It showered the damp air with coughs of smutty debris and left both the lead racers so deeply shaken that they finished their lap at less than half speed. From the distant stands a cold ‘Ahhh’ rose up on slow heavy wings as eyes scanned the dark wet distance as a long spindle of red churning cloud drew breath of fire and then whisked out of sight, black upon black, leaving only the gun blue taint of ‘burnt’ to blindly find their nostrils moments latter under the splattered wash of the heavy chrome arch lights humming over head.

Above the pale plume, its raspy invisible finger found the distant golden face of Big Ben and crawled across its glowing ennobling forehead as a slug might slime a slow crawl over a flawless daisy. As if in recoil the large clock tower shuddered and bellowed out its thunderous peal. Twelve long tolls boomed as the little disjointed squeal of sirens rose up below, and then gave way to dead silence. 1929 had passed, 1930 had a risen, and the world would never be the same!

CHAPTER TWO

“If kids go it’s banned. If adults go it’s art.” V.V.

The Ultra Conservative Party had been the brain child of the Royal family its self, a last dying gasp at political power, if you will. But it had stumbled right out of the gate and had quickly churned in its tumble into something no one had foreseen or could stop from finishing its recovery of kinetic motion. The army had got on board. Then the navy. The air force had joined soon after. The military had gone commercial. More than the militarizing of the social public order which had alarmed so many for so long, this was the military venturing its assets and power into the privet sector of big business. It looked ugly and wrong to every one from the start, but armed with a levy of lawyers and a direct spigot into the tax payers pockets the military soon had so many ventures into the every day lives of the general public and so many active military commanders dual saluting upon financial board of directors that soon the entire spectrum of civilian life had indelibly merged into the vast military gut of being. They owned dog food companies, fishing fleets, textile mills, cereal companies, off shore oil interests, publishing houses, and so on. Every where the military nudged its bloody beak, it began to feed in greater gulps of flesh. The fishing fleet became canneries and then retail brand products and then shops. Textile mills became sheep herders and slaughter houses and garment outlets. It spread in all directions, out maneuvering and destroying all open market competitions with in and with out. When it reached a twenty seven percent share of the over all business of the British Isles it toppled into banking and investments, after that it held over forty percent of the over all financial interest of the common wealth in just under a fort night. Its political wing, ‘The Ultra Conservative Party’ grew in equal manic proportion. If you weren’t a member you were publicly listed as a traitor to the nation and subject to higher taxes and indiscriminate searches and arrests. Habeas Corpus had all but ceased to exist, based upon president established during a previous war. The party found it prudent to by pass the courts entirely by declaring that all they did was under the umbrella action of a once completed war that was now declared uncompleted and open ended and by declaring all their opponents first abroad then at home, ‘traitors’ and thus stripping them of all legal rights to consul or law, With that, the rule of law was little more than the whim of the vocal few against the silent gagged majority. There wasn’t a news paper they didn’t own, a television station, or radio station they didn’t control. All systems of check and balance upon which a public democracy survives had vanished and no one had noticed its passing. The tired exhausted impoverished workers scrapping to hold down two or three full time jobs with little to no benefits to balance out an economy shifted entirely to the greed of upper management, snored in a daze through the whole thing. What had started out with little trivial absence of common sense balance of true equality in ‘rights’ had slumped into a rapid shift of the scales to all or nothing. Federal government workers had been getting certain paid holidays off for years that all other workers had to slave through and it was thus inevitable that soon ‘only’ government employees had the right to ‘holidays’ and as the government became increasingly an abject wing of the military elite it wasn’t long before the basic idea of ‘equality’ had been re-aligned into a ‘fair and just allotment of said perks and rights’. It happened drip by drip upon a thousand mile front on all levels of being and yet it happened not over the shoulder of anyone, but there in the full face of all, and it happened by the willing labor of the masses, as the loud furry of the few lashed on the tired fear of the silent majority whose blood drowned out the whistling voices of the aware. From the shadows one could see the great graying of power as all the necessary vitality of youth was shackled and gagged into an ‘upgrade’ of the country into an all encompassing social order of ridged feudalistic class division, mirroring the thuggish dogma of military strata. Religion, the only other great eradicator of individuality and thriven of class division of elite and outcast, of have and have not, of better and lesser by decreeing degree of a few dividing the many, bloomed and blossomed and eagerly joined in hand and hand with the military’s acquisition of power so that as a two headed monstrosity they swayed and belched poisonous fumes over the blasted and desiccated lands. The division of Church and State had failed and the division of Business and Law had erased into a power of one meandering paranoid egoistical flawed parasite whose sole drive of being was to continue to exist at all cost and whose sole defense against its own caustic existence was to root out and destroy all real or imagined threats both external and within to its very tenuous form; the age of shadows had begun.

At the summit of this still cooling slag heap was the Prime Minister himself, Prime Minister Shrub, and his little gorgons knot of thugs; Assfield ,Cheatem, and Cardinal Asscroft. Into this non-elect elite had recently entered Vex Vroom, the father of the late Vercingetorix Vroom, and the recently deceased Victoria Vroom. Vex could pose a problem, as the unofficial voice of the opposing power within the recent schism inside the Ultra Conservative Party, he could theoretically win inside and external support for his slanderous and increasingly heretical views of re-instating the old divisions of Church and State and Military and Civilian power. There was no real opposition party out side the U.C.P. but the internal strife recently had been kowtowing to the remnants of external power politicos that Cardinal Asscroft’s little Red Cross Guard hadn’t bothered to sweep up and put away. Shrub had used his fathers political contacts and his brothers political position to fix the last election and win by the narrowest of false margins. He had played dirty as hell and had still almost lost! It was something the military wouldn’t tolerate a second time. They liked clear over whelming victories, ones no one could question in public. Shrub had got the message. The only dead cert in politics was that no leader had ever been kicked out of office during a major war. Shrub needed a war. And he needed one now. It was easy enough to arrange the Cause Bella, politicos had been forging little deaths of their own civilians for justifiable wars for centuries, but this Vex could hex the deal, and Shrub knew it.

Prime Minister Shrub stood staring out of the window with his hands clasped behind his back, while his second in command, Cheatem, rolled his eyes at the assembled few; Assfield, Cardinal Asscroft, and his personal assistant Ashkiss. Another assistant was missing, Brone Kowes, who was in the hospital after a little hunting ‘accident’ in which Cheatem had shot the man in the face while bird hunting. Cheatem was still furious about it all, as this ‘privet’ incident had ended up in the press. ‘I thought we owned the God damned papers,’ he had bellowed at Cardinal Asscroft, who worked publicly as both the head of the religious division of the party and as the press sectary for public relation of appropriate information. Privately he also ran the secret police unit known as The Red Cross Guards, an usurped and mangled name from long ago and now used by a unit that had risen out of the early ‘faith based charity’ political power movement and that now had informers and ‘trash men’ through out the empire. Some of these both in and out of uniform had quickly been sent to the news papers in general and to the homes of the reporters in privet to quell the second in commands rage. The papers and reporters had not thought they had acted with any sedition as there was nothing to the story but an unfortunate accident, but absolute power hinges on whims of chance not laws of substance and several citizens found themselves the terrified abject victims of the Red Cross Guards sadistic joys, part of ‘their’ perk and just rights program.

Cheatem was still boiling over this recent incident of insult to his integrity only to have his mood soured all the more by being ‘summoned’ to Shrub’s office on such short notice. Everyone knew ‘HE’ ran the show, and he was scowling at the shallow back of the man who might be out playing his very limited part. And yet it was a very important part, a weak and brainless Prime Minister allowed the non-elect powers that be free reign without any struggle from within and gave them all a blank check for any responsibility. What ever the little stray bit or piece of fluff that the public might howl about could and often was to their own amusement libeled as the result of their Prime Ministers basic idiocy. Cheatem even remembered a recent television wag who quipped about Cheatem’s recent hart surgery, ‘that the country was just one hart beat away from having Prime Minister Shrub in power.’ It had caused a lot of laughs every where and none as many as in Cheatem’s own office as he repeated it over and over again. ‘Too bad that fellow on the telly had gone a touch too far a few weeks latter and had to be collected and ‘put out’ by one of The Red Cross trash men, ah well, comics were a dime a dozen, though they just weren’t as funny as they use to be,’ Cheatem puzzled at that and his scowl dipped into a momentary frown. He shook it off, ‘doesn’t matter.’

Cheatem stared now, at the back of what had to be one of the dumbest men he had ever met, which was saying quiet a bit as he had spent the last decade of his life in politics. ‘The bright ones go into business, not government. So we should make government more like business, profit driven, reward based,’ the U.C.P. had explained to the public, ‘our strength is your strength.’ That this was coming from the Military, a place where only the dumbest of the dumb go willingly into and excel, didn’t seem to register on any out spoken minds at the time. At least none that did not prove to be expendable and thus collectable into the bags of the trash men.

Cheatem glared at the weak shoulder blades padded in the three thousand dollar suit before him and wondered if, ‘the little charade hadn’t gone on long enough to do away with the window dressing as it were. Every jack in the street knew ‘HE’ called all the shots, and the party’s power seemed solid and unbreakable. There was no challenging force to oppose them, they were already changing all laws to their will, did they really need this little peep squeak any more? It just chafed him, he ‘knew’ that Shrub wasn’t looking at anything out of the window before him, the idiot had forgotten to pull back the light under gauze curtains that ran behind the heavy brocade drapes, and he knew he sure the hell wasn’t thinking anything! He was just standing there, wasting everyone else’s valuable time, posing! For who, Cheatem for the life of him couldn’t figure out! Trying to establish some kind of mood, perhaps, but the imbecile is so unconnected from the real world that his whole sense of timing is off, he’s over played the moment by half! Everyone in the room knew Shrub was a silver spoon buffoon, Cheatem rolled his eyes again this time at God, or the ceiling in any case, as he was certain that The Red Cross trash men had God well in hand and in that case He would be in one of the coal black cells down below or an ash pit, or did they go ahead and approve the bar of soap proposal? So military not to want to waste anything of the plunder since the production of goods by exhausted slaves constantly degraded.’

Assfield coughed into his fist, his thick glasses always spotty and failing to make his pig like eyes look remotely humane despite their powerful magnification, slid slightly upon his straight pen sharp nose. Cheatem disliked the man intensely, who ran the entire military and yet held no discernable rank. ‘Politicians playing at generals, and generals playing at politicians, where dose it end?’ With the division between the military and the capital commerce gone it only seemed a matter of time before the last strands of illusionary fluff of the separation of the military and the other branches of public office would like wise vanish. But for now they still feebly hung in the gentle breeze awaiting the sudden summer storm as a field of dandelions might, to shatter upon the wind and leave a nation of picked clean bones in their wake. For now Assfield held the voice of the military, though Shrub still held the ceremony of the office in title as the civilian commander of the branch. But as Cheatem actually held the power of governmental rule under his belt behind the false shadow of Shrub so too Assfield held the power of the military, it was inevitable both men should distrust one another’s shifting spectral base of power. Assfiled held his post thanks to his work in previous years as the head of the Military Intelligence Agency, and latter his key role in gaining the revoking of the law that forbid the highest of Military command from holding their post for more than a single consecutive term. With no term limits and the power to elect their own leadership within the military upper brass, the coterie coupe as it were, had over whelmed even as it severed its self from the other branches of power, and did so with nary a ripple. Assfield was their version of Shrub and yet a golden boy of shrewd savvy where Shrub was a foppish ignoramus, a crowned court jester to bare the assassins blow or in this case to ward off the vehemence of the wraith of the yet sleeping populous. Cheatem distrusted the man, and he wasn’t the only one, the military as well found Assfield a puzzling creature, some what alien to their blue print of creation. He seemed to have a canine loyalty to Shrub, or at least the over whelming need to ‘serve’ with utter suicidal conviction, and yet removed of Shrub’s sight he had a voraciousness of self survival at any and all cost that made him seem much more perplexing than her really was. In any case, he was both predictable to a fault and surprising at any moment. He could be self blinding and seer like in penetrating the moments most complex perplexities. He thought deeply but said nothing that was not party logos. Cheatem thought of a bombed out shell of a house he had saw the other day, another of those ‘radical’ anti-government attacks that apparently Assfield was staging in order to create a base of public sentiment for some new military proposal soon to be submitted to the Parliament. Cheatem had stopped his motorcade for a photo op and had commiserated with the weeping survivors but now he was suddenly reminded of the blackened images he saw standing there in the wet charred street, and he remembered the glass lying scattered every where, and how near the disgusting clumps of sooty wet masonry and family debris of their sodden lives the lumps of glass, now blue black, that had been several panes of shattered piles that the resulting fire had then melted into one solid lump. That was Assfield, all theses different confusing planes of glass re-melted into one black solid lump, and everyone could see and understand the various panes as they had been and were in their own selves but no one could fathom that new coherent lump. ‘They think he can be easily understood, and quickly broken, because of his seeming easily seen through one dimensional aspect. But those that thought so are all gone and he remains, because he isn’t any of those singular things, he’s that some kind of indigestible lump of something. I won’t make that mistake about him.’ Cheatem tore his gaze off of the thin but stone cut weathered man Assfield and looked back at Shrub who had finally found his belated cue to turn back to the gathering and get to business.

“It is time for a new crusade,” Shrub said raising his arms before the bored and agitated group.

“What a dumb ass,” Cheatem mumbled under his breath.

Cardinal Asscroft smiled.

His assistant Ashkiss frowned.

Assfield shifted in his two hundred year old priceless creaking fragile chair and said, “Any place in particular, Mr. Prime Minister?”

CHAPTER THREE

“There has always been slavery, we only outlaw words, never profitable deeds.” V.V.

The light was blinding but with out heat, it had a dead whiteness to it that betrayed the lack of sun or electric or gas lamp, it had none of the yellow glow of life to it. ‘Surly I must be dead,’ thought Victoria as she struggled to focus into that smear of unnatural white brilliance.

“You are not dead,” a strange but familiar voice much like a rusty grate being torn off its hoary hinges by a tornado hovered beside her. She swam to it. “Though it was touch and go for a while, you will survive.” She struggled for words but only a light and painful thick grumble issued from somewhere that may or may not have been her. “Give yourself a few moments longer, I will speak for you. You are in a ship called, ‘The Vengeance’. You have been rescued from the flaming ruin of your race car, an accident that was no accident, but an act of willful sabotage. I would have interceded earlier on be half of your safety, but I observed you had discovered the deadly device and assumed you had some kind of plan upon not revealing its existence to others about you. If your plan was to forage your own death, then you came far too close to the edge of that gulf, for none but myself could have brought you back into the land of the living. You should never trust radial key wound timers for accuracy of interrelated seconds with so much on the line. You leapt a few seconds too late from the open cock pit of your vehicle to escape the full vehemence of the blast .Or did you think you could accomplish more as a corpse than as a living soul? The dead can march no further than the point of collapse and oft do little more than rot for their nations sake. We imply more to the dead than they will nor deserve, less out of kindness than guilt, I should think. We heap more than dirt to burry them, much more. I suggest you live and die again in more fighting and fitting manner. This last death lacked theatrical punch if not mere common sense of purpose. In any regards I did much to recover you from death as I would some one who had slipped on a patch of ice, I hope you will repay me in the aspect that if indeed you willful sought your own destruction, that considering of my labor and time and resources that if you continue in this wish that you at least make more of an end in your self by dying in such a way as to be more beneficial to others than a slash of the wrist or the swallow of selfish poison. Martyrdom perhaps? Though one of such a nature that none should know nor mourn your second passing in any regards. You are as much of the dead as if you were dead, I suppose.’’

During all of this Victoria had managed to focus and get something of her bearings and had even managed to sit up on what her woozy senses told her was most definitely more of a table than a bed. “Wha- where- wh-” thoughts refused to form and remain stationary in her spinning head.

The voice continued. “You seem to be coming around this time. You have woken up several times during the past three weeks you have been here, but always only for a few moments before lapsing into unconsciousness again. I hope you stay with us longer this time. You were Victoria Vroom, but she is dead to the world, so I suggest another name, perhaps your old nick name, ‘Vavavoom’? Quaint in a child like way, yours and yet known to so few of the living past as to be unrecognizable to the still living present. Oh, that is me.” Victoria had located the voice. It was coming from a large six foot tall silver back mountain gorilla. The gorilla approached her and held out its enormous black hand. “I felt it wise to hold back out of your direct line of sight this time. You swooned last time I tried to help you up off the recovery table.” The Voice was actually coming out of a large metal disk embedded into the chest of the enormous beast. “Cyborg, actually. As much machine as living tissue, a work in process if you like. Easy now.” The hand had paused upon its approach toward her to return back to its own body and point a well manicured brown nailed finger at the various electronic bits of machinery melded into its flesh, but shot back out to her as she felt dizzy again, and grasped her in a firm but gentle manner and helped her back up to a sitting position. “Your body is still very weak, be careful,” it offered as she swung her legs off the table and over the bright metal floor. Her bare feet touched the floor and thrilled at the odd contact. “It’s a non-metal alloy unknown to man, I use vegetable oils to make it, ten times stronger than steel and at a fraction of its weight.” She looked at her hands, they seemed normal yet some how different. “Yes, your skin was mostly destroyed by the fire, that is a synthetic skin I have grown for you. It’s in the early stages of testing, but there was little other choice. I think you will find it increases your tactile awareness by several degrees while being virtually indestructible to most puncture and tarring wounds.” Victoria looked down at her large nipples which were swelling with the excitement of the cool air dancing around them and the growing awareness of the cool tiles beneath her feet. “Yes, as I said, an increase in tactile awareness, if you find yourself in another fire you would feel an increased sensitivity to the pain of the flames and yet you would not find your new synthetic skin blistering nor burning. It works the other way too, an heightened increases in sensual pleasure as well.” Victoria looked woozily over at the mountain of hairy flesh and realized she was completely naked in a very strange place, but somehow it didn’t matter. She began to wander around the large machinery filled bright white room. She moved wobbly to one wall of curved windows and gasped as she looked out into a sea of clouds and a very tinny thread of lights below. “As I said, you are on a ship. The Vengeance is an air ship, a dirigible if you like, though of a structure far advanced for its time. We are several thousand feet above London at the moment, hovering in a fog bank of our own creation.” Despite every thing she had been telling herself to the contrary, Victoria Vavavoom Vroom, swooned.

CHAPTER FOUR

“We fight not for the belief in change, but for the hope of change.” V.V.

Vex Vroom removed the black arm band from his upper left arm and tossed it into his desk drawer. It had been a month since his daughters horrible accident and wearing the badge of mourning any longer might have been seen as being tackless considering his political opponents innuendos that he was furthering his career off of his loved ones unfortunate deaths. His office was small and on the third floor, but it was his alone, he no longer was sharing an office with several colleagues. It was crammed with his books and boxes of files and despite his compulsion to cleanliness and order that he had rigorously taught himself at his wife’s death so long ago, the place was columns of chaotic piles out of necessity despite his desire. It was late, or early depending on how one was prone to reading a clock, three a.m. and Vex closed his office door behind him and dug out his large ring of keys. His graying temples puckered as he frowned over the keys until he found the one he was looking for and clicked the lock shut. The hallway was lit by yellow electric lamps that hummed and ebbed upon the walls, its living light cast all in a strange meld of half shadow as it bounced off heavily waxed tile and heavy marble posts. Large plants in brass containers dotted the maze of corridors and Vex found the absence of both people and sound disturbing to his tired mind. The walls were empty of paintings or prints in this wing on this floor except directly in front of the main stair case and the elevators, Vex headed in their direction now. There were hordes of boxed art works gathering dust in the cellars and Vex wondered why they did not place them upon some of these walls, but the image of Spartan decor was part of his public persona if not of his real true nature. Still, he winced as more and more works of art were stripped from public buildings by U.C.P. decrees. In the vein of Cromwell, much of the works were originally boxed up and sold abroad for ready party cash, but lately they had been stored up for the almost bi-monthly ‘vanity’ bonfires of the Church. Seemed such a waste to him, at least the sale of the works had brought in money and kept the items alive, as it were. But their was no direct arguing with the Church division of the party, one needed black mail to enter into any discussion with them, And Vex believed he was massing enough of that particular currency to request an audience with the Cardinal soon.

Vex came up short as he reached for one of the old metal fire doors that divided the various sections and froze before it. There had been a sound of some kind, even now he could faintly make out its odd echo as it flowed down the corridor on either side of him and behind him. He frowned open mouth at it, but it died before he could make sure he had really heard it. The cleaning crews started on the upper floors and worked their way down, they would be on the first floor by now mopping the lobbies. The guards patrolled their rounds every forty minutes like clock work, otherwise they could be found at their station in front of the main stair case and elevators on each floor, which is where his crystal faced watch told them they would be now. Vex was no fool curiosity did not out weigh the obvious deaths of his extinct family, it could be nothing more than another office drone working late as he had or arriving early, but he would take no chances. He pushed the large metal door open and headed toward the main exit and the guard post. It was directly a head of him just around the next corner and he reached it with out any repeat of the noise he was no longer sure he had heard, whatever it may have been he must have left it squarely on the other side of the fire door. Rounding the corner Vex saw the main open stair case heading down to the second floor and its book end of elevators with their iron grill fronts pulled shut before the closed doors, in a few more steps he also saw the guards.

The first guard was sprawled out upon the floor, unconscious by a blow to the back of the head, if the large bruise was any indication. The second guard was behind the large curved desk that housed the hot plate and coffee pot and welcomed any one advancing up the stairs to the third floor landing. It was the guards post on this floor and virtually identical in lay out to the floor above and below it. The guard was slumped in his chair, also unconscious, a small dart in his chest undoubtedly the culprit of his sleeping state. Both guards had been tied up in a strange black cord of an almost metal construction but as flexible as rope. Vex could not rouse nor remove the bonds binding the two men. Vex knew that what ever had happened to these men had been done very recently as he had been out to this very guard station just a half hour ago for another cup of their rather strong coffee. He decided he needed to summon help he turned to the large black phone secreted just under the curved desk that connected directly to the other guard stations, only to freeze as the sound of the fire door closing off the section opposite of the one Vex had exited from banged open. He listened intently to the sounds of the soft leather foot falls and only straightened up as the third and last remaining guard rounded the corner. ‘He must have been in the rest room,’ Vex found his tired and bewildered mind thinking, ‘or was he the one responsible for all of this?’

The guard froze at the sight of Vex leaning over the bound guard in the chair and the other guard lying on the floor further on behind him. The uniformed man reached for his heavy black revolver and Vex crouched instinctively while shouting out, “No!” His hands rose up to his face. There was a whirling sound and Vex raised his head and lowered his spread hands to see the guard sprawled out upon the floor, his drawn gun still clattering in spirals across the glossy mosaic. Vex immediately turned to look behind him, and there just beyond the unconscious guard he had stumbled upon earlier was a most amazing figure. For there in the soft warm shadow between two scone wall lights, stood a woman whose head was covered in a shinny wet looking black leather helmet that pilots sometimes wore, and her large eyes where masked behind a pair of large goggles whose lenses were of an almost mirror like quality so that one could only make out the faintest trace of the deep cat like eyes behind them. Her lower face was uncovered and her large red full lips burst in a surprised little ‘o’ at the sight of him, or so he remembered it latter. Her neck was swathed in a torn and ragged scarf of indiscernible color and her upper body was covered in a large aviator style trench coat, though of a cut and material he had never seen before. There was a large up turned collar that framed her small head, and the sleeves were voluminous almost ballooned and covered in many unfastened straps and buckles, that terminated into two small gloved hands that were open backed and like wise strapped and buckled at her dainty wrists. In each hand she fisted a hand gun of the most unusual design which she now lowered slightly as she stared at him. The coat its self was left open to the waist with over sized lapels, which gave way to a tight corseted like binding of the coat about her tiny waist with several buttons that cinched the coat in its over lapping into a girdle like garment. Below this the coat flared out again into an almost dress like skirting, revealing that this singular garment was indeed all she wore for body clothing, for one could easily see both her large erect nipples in her waist deep décolletage, and her large patch of unshaved pubic hair growing thickly in the equally open lower gap of the trench coat. About her waist a low slung belt held a pouch and two empty holsters, the large black enameled buckle was embossed with a large gold ‘V’ in its center. Below the wide split sweeping hem of the knee length trench-dress coat, her long supple legs were sheathed in a pair of black wet looking thigh high boots with six inch spiked heels and pointed toes. Her red burning flag style hair where it escaped from under her tight unbuckled helmet, cascaded about her padded wide shoulder lapels and found its long curly way into the valley of her enormous freckled cleavage. In all she was such an ethereal vision that Vex stared at her blinking in wonder, even as she seemed equally undone by his own prescience here.

It was then that the loud clap of several guards leather shoes upon the marbled stairs snapped him and her out of their mutual daze. The guards were responding to the busy signal of the phone which she had taken off the hook earlier and they now charged up the large stair case puffing and clutching at their still holstered weapons. They spilled into the open hallway half out of breath and took in the bizarre sight with wide eyes. They saw him and the other guards and frowned at him in a little group of three until one of them saw her out of the corner of his eye. He reached for his gun even as she raised both of hers. Vex watched her fire both strange weapons simultaneously. The one in her right hand shot a dart that struck one of the guards in the neck and spun him already collapsing into unconsciousness into the confused body of the guard next to him. The gun in her left shot out a silver blur of what looked to be a squid that hit the guard who saw her in the chest and immediately began to wrap long expanding coils of almost liquid jelly like filaments about his body, it swung about him as one a bolo used by Mexican cow boys might entangle the legs of a fleeing calf. The fibers seemed to harden rapidly and the guard fell back wards knocked off balance but still struggling by the concussion of the odd bullet that had struck him. The third guard rolled between his two falling comrades and managed to unholster his weapon and get off a quick shot before he was brought down to one knee in the entanglement of bodies. The bullet narrowly missed its mark and dug a long scorch along the wall near the woman’s head. She fired another round of her dart gun which errored wide of the mark and fell back in a rapid retreat escaping behind the large metal fire door which stopped another lead slug that the now rising guard managed to squeeze off after her. The guard leapt to his feet in pursuit of the escaping woman and Vex excitedly followed grabbing a fallen pistol as he did so from the polished floor.

Despite his best efforts his aging legs were no match for the youth of the young woman and the shouting guard and Vex quickly found him self lost in the maze of small sub-corridors stopping out of breath and chasing suddenly after the muffled echoing bark of a gun shot or yelp. It was during one of these breathless pauses with his hands upon his knees that he found himself suddenly surprised by a fresh group of guards from the above floor who were racing around, one of them having heard the gun fire through a ventilation duct on his rounds, and alerting his fellows. They nearly shot him and he began to seriously question what unthinkable compulsion had sent him in such armed pursuit. It was in the company of one of these guards who was ordered to stay with him that the pair stumbled upon the open door of Vex’s office. A quick glance showed Vex that his desk had been riffled through and several of his document files stolen. What was missing he couldn’t tell as of yet, but nothing but the most sensitive of data was kept in the hidden desk drawer that was one of the ones now open and empty! The pair returned to the hallway where Vex noticed the leaves of one of the potted plants waving and swaying. The two approached the large plant carefully and found it was being buffeted by a cold steady breeze. Leaning around the corner they both saw the woman opening a window at the hallways end, which had its large metal bars already missing. She was apparently leaving by the same point in which she had gained entry. Vex looked to the young guard for some sign on how they should proceed, only to notice the open mouth lad to be obviously entranced by the shapely large peach like naked buttocks wiggling in the window sill before him. Vex sighed and turned back to the disappearing figure and shouted for her to stop. She turned in the window and raised one of her gloved arms out into the dark sky while unholstering her pistol with her other hand and squeezing off a rapid shot at them. The dart caught Vex firmly in the chest and he sunk down into a deep convulsive slumber. The sound of gun shots fading behind the surface of the oily of well sentient being as he felt himself sinking, falling into uncoiling blackness.

CHAPTER FIVE

“We fear success more than we fear failure, in success the unknowable is aroused.” V.V.

The gorilla finished bandaging Vavavoom’s wrist and she thanked him as he moved to put the medical supplies away. “You need to practice more with the wrist locator, you could have wrenched your arm entirely out of its socket. The locator has a powerful magnetic field when activated that allows the zeppelin’s grapple line to snake through the air and find you, but it is only a dumb machine and once connected it begins to recoil at once and at amazing speed. Try and remember that next time.” The gorilla, who had told her he had no name, not any more, carefully looked over the glove with the built in wrist locator and placed it down gently upon the table with its mate and the helmet and goggles from Vavavoom’s costume. She still retained the trench-dress coat and her boots, she began to remove her holsters and guns, her pouch and its contents were already lying upon another table in the center of the room.

“What of the guard who had grabbed hold of me?” Vavavoom asked wincing as the shoulder strap tugged over her wrapped wrist.

“Probably fell to his death,” the gorilla shrugged.

“That’s terrible,” Vavavoom shuddered.

“Yes, it is. I’m sorry. But most importantly what do you think of these documents?”

“I don’t believe them!” She frowned at the papers the gorilla was now fingering with pursed lips.

“You recovered them your self. You can not doubt their validity, nor their contents. Your father is the head of a secret cabal. Who’s purpose is to feign public descent against the Ultra Conservative Party while privately levering to supplant them with a foreign power of even more evil and maligned intent.”

“I can’t believe it.” She grabbed her shoulders and hugged her self against the shudder that quaked her body.

“Oh believe it, my child. And what’s more he is the one responsible for you and your brothers death. As well as your boy friend, Mathew Marks.” The gorilla’s voice was harsh, but then he fell silent and added, “ you have been through much, perhaps too much for one day. You should rest, here I will show you to a more privet room.” The gorilla led the young girl to a small cabin with a single bunk and a dresser and small shower crammed into the room and stood in the doorway behind her, “ I will leave you now. Please try and rest, while I look over the documents more thoroughly that you have brought here to our attention. Good night.” The gorilla shut the door loudly but he had not left the room. Vavavoom looked at him in surprise but he silenced her with a quick finger to his lip. The gorilla stealthily went over to the dresser and removed a tablet of paper and some ink and a pen and began to write, while motioning her to him.

Vavavoom looked over the large muscular shoulder of the gorilla and read what he was writing to her: ‘Do not make any sound,’ the pen wrote, ‘the device in my chest broadcasts HIS voice not my own. I have no way to speak to you except in this way. The device also has a transmitter that picks up any sound I or you may make. Right now he thinks I am reading the documents, soon he will begin to speak to me about them, and any future plans he has for us. I will write this to you even as he speaks to me, and tell you the terrible danger the two of us are in.” No sooner had the gorilla written this than the disk in his chest began to speak to him in that mechanical voice she had assumed was his own. And as he had written to her the voice talked to him about the papers and other things concerning the air ship and the nights events. But Vavavoom scarcely heard the voice her attention was riveted upon the rapidly moving pen and the horrifying tale it told.

‘The voice you hear is of your brother. He is nothing more than a disembodied brain floating in a jar of fluid and wires. I am, was your beloved, Mark. When I was killed your brother tried to save my life with the help of several of his best scientist. For a while I was nothing more than a brain in a jar as he is now. He intended to place my brain in a synthetic being, but this creation was destroyed in a raid by the Red Cross Guards, wounded and with many of the other doctors dead, your brother transplanted my brain into this body in what he hoped would be a temporary solution. But shortly after this operation, he was attacked again by another group of the Red Cross Guards, this time acting under your own father’s hidden orders. This time there was no escape. I brought his remains here to this secret air ship of our own creation. The prize of my labor and whom I had one day hoped to name after you my darling. And here his body died, but not before I and the remainder of his doctors had removed his brain and put it into the small vat where he lives now. The other doctors perished one by one in attempts to gain information and make new contacts. From their deaths we learned that your father was responsible for our deaths in his global bid on behalf of another nations power. Which nation we can only guess at. In fact until tonight we had no concrete evidence of the extent of the conspiracy until you brought back the documents lying out in the bridge now. Your brother is kept behind locked doors in the master control room, the door of which will only admit me. He will call me to him soon to enter in the data you have recovered into his sensory web. This disk grafted to my chest dose not give him any power of sight only sound. But before I go, I must make you understand this, I believe your brother is growing slowly insane! His state of being is becoming increasingly unstable, and what is worse do to the way my cy-borg mechanisms are wired directly into the ship and the ship has become increasingly under his control, I believe I may becoming insane with him! But it is impossible for me to tell. All I can do is provide you with this room which has an emergency exit hatch which has no sensor relaying back to him, and which has its own magnetic grappling wire. You can come and go as freely as you dare with it, but if he finds out you are gone he will hunt you down and try to recover you by force. To that ends he has some service robots of his construction that can move freely both on board and off the ship. Remember you must be in relatively close proximity to the zeppelin to call down the grappling line, use your wrist locator’s built in homing compass to find the ship when you need it. The ship is currently on an automatic course in a large looping holding pattern above the city and the channel. I tell you this because our only chance may rest with the only surviving doctor of your brother’s original clique, a Doctor X. I don’t know much more about him, except he was one of the most brilliant of the group, and that he is being held a virtual captive by your father. There’s a man named ‘Smalls’ he’s one of the Red Cross Guards who dose double duty for both the Cardinal and your father. He’s the only lead we have as to the where about of Doctor X. In twenty minutes we will be passing over the ware house district and a small pub that Smalls likes to frequent. I can say no more, he calls, and I MUST obey!’ With that the gorilla stole out of the room not daring even a glance at Vavavoom’s tear streaked face.

With the metal cabin door securely shut the hulking beast quickly gathered up the lose sheets of papers upon the central table and with a rapid ambling gate disappeared down the maze of girder framed corridors. He paused before a small door and punched in the number lock code. The door popped open and he quickly entered and clicked it shut behind him. Inside he tossed the papers into a waste basket and whistled as he approached the large jar in the center of the room where a brain hung limply in foul colored liquid and wires. “How are we today, Vercingetorix? My, my you don’t look so good. How about giving me some ‘eyes’? Now be a good boy, or else!” A screen in the room flickered on. “That’s more like it, but you know what I want to see.” The large blue screen flickered and the view shifted to one of Vavavoom sitting in her cabin sobbing. “There you go, and for being such a good fellow,” the gorilla fiddled with some knobs at the base of the brain tank and the ugly rancid liquid drained out and new glowing fresh green liquid bubbled in. “There you go, mate. Now eat up and get big and strong again. You NEED me and I need you, to head the ship over the ware house district. Make it snappy.” The gorilla moved away from the central jar with the brain in it and stepped over the shattered remains of a service robot as he ambled over to the bank of screens and deck chairs. From the ships consol a mechanical voice stated, “Ships course altered, silent running initiated.”

The gorilla beamed a smile, “you’re being very cooperative this morning Vercingetorix, I like that!” The gorilla slid into a chair that groaned against his weight. His eyes feasted upon the obvious large bountiful cleavage jiggling across the large screen before him, “Yes, I like that a lot!” An enormous erection began to fill the Gorilla’s lap, “me Tarzan you Jane! Ha Ha Ha!”

“Out side hatch opening,” the ship’s voice stated.

“Out standing! She’s going after Doctor X! I just love it when a well laid plan of evil goes sooo very nicely! Ha Ha HA!” The gorilla spun around in his deck chair as he laughed, “now let’s hope no harm befalls our little intrepid heroine, because I will most certainly have a BIG surprise for her when she returns! Ha Ha Ha!” The gorilla howled as he throttled his enormous prick.