Will Destroy the Galaxy for Cash by Yahtzee Croshaw

Author:Yahtzee Croshaw [Croshaw, Yahtzee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781506715117
Google: VOsCEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Published: 2020-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

I’d been holding up pretty well, trapped in a debris field by a hostile ship, in a small room with a career criminal, a murderous crime lord, and the infamous progenitor of the galaxy’s most persistent cyberscourge, but this new fact that I was also sharing that room with the cryonically preserved body of Terrorgorn was taking just a little bit too much piss.

I was the first to move. I shoved Sturb against a wall. He was sweating so hard that liquid flew off him like I was wringing out a sponge. “You knew about this?!” I demanded.

He shook his head rapidly, showering me further like a lawn sprinkler. “No! I . . . I wouldn’t have agreed to this if I’d known it was Terrorgorn in there, I swear to God!”

His argument checked out. Evil tech genius, yes, but not an evil lunatic, which is what one would need to be to want to be anywhere near Terrorgorn, even if he was imprisoned in a thick cylinder of stainless steel.

Still pushing Sturb into the wall, I dropped my head and stared at my shoes. I was only half-aware of my own babbling voice. “There’s nothing wrong with Blaze. Trac. Warden said I couldn’t see him for myself because of the quarantine. It made sense at the time.”

I looked to Derby, who put up his “hands” in innocent protest. “Don’t look at me. I had the same understanding you had. And why are we all soiling ourselves over this person? I could saw off their head with my plasma cutter with nary a stir to their slumber.”

I shook my head. “Terrorgorn can’t die. He can regenerate from any wound. No one’s ever found a way to kill him.”

“Suspended animation’s the best you can do,” said Sturb. “Extreme low temperatures actually halt the regeneration cycle in his cells, as I understand. I’d heard he was cryopreserved somewhere, but the last I heard he was being passed around the, you know, stupidly rich collectors . . . but anyway, I don’t . . . why would Penelope want us to recover Terrorgorn?”

Henderson emitted two hums, the second an octave lower than the first. With the sharp clarity of thought that tends to come in a crisis situation, I understood that he was saying “I know” in a singsong voice.

I stepped over to him and pulled the now extremely moist sock away from his mouth. “What?”

Henderson spat a few times and blew out his cheeks to dispel the last few traces of sock, then offered me a friendly smile. “I said, I know why she had you steal it. And I’ll be relaxed enough to be forthcoming about it as soon as you blow that damn thing back into space.” He was trying to maintain his trademark deceptively cheerful manner, but his current state of mortal terror reduced the effect somewhat. Henderson wasn’t big on star pilot history, but even the layman knew to fear Terrorgorn. He was to space villains what Robert Blaze was to space heroes: the one everyone knows even if they know ply-all else about it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.