Spiceday

See HERE, HERE and HERE for parts 1, 2 and 3

The story so far: The Empire gathers the vital spice, which keeps the miracle of endless speculative gain going.

Now read on…

Thud-thud-thud of the scout helicopter, missing a rotor but still airworthy, or so they all hope. A killing day out on the Meshkenet Erg, blastfurnace heat and scour-sand squalls burdened with small lightnings that prod from out of the gathering shrouds of dark and fork in all directions.

Up ahead, the scout chopper fires out a series of three green smoke mortars. Sandserpent spoor three kilometers ahead. Clearly their comms are not working in the static discharge of the electric sandstorms.

Gillken Mukfor is driver of Spice Collector Number 964. The drill at this point is to deploy the soundbuffers, so he flips the switch. A blaring noise like nothing ever heard shivers out of the speakers lining the hull of the great machine that crawls on tracks. It's a sound concocted by Imperial Sound Technicians to lure the the Grossdesert Serpent. Gillken thinks it's a mating call or something. Nobody's ever explained to him. He missed the induction training and nobody seems to care whether he was trained or not.

Two puffs of green smoke. Two klicks out. Gillken turns a knob to setting number two. The sound changes to something eerie like bags of liver being dragged over a carpet made of cats. This sound is supposed to arouse the Serpent, to make it sexually receptive and yet anxious to defecate. Or so they say down in the repair station.

"Hoop-hoop-hoop, ma brother!" Appearing in the control cabin is Jeskar, chief of the shovel squad, with his shovel perched on his shoulder. He's an annoying prick but he gets the shovellers working fast so Gillken tolerates his foibles. Anything to get the job done and out of here. "Hap-hap-hap, oh my comrade, looks like a big one coming in!" Gillken keeps the rig heading straight for the rise where the helicopter hovers, just as the last signal is fired. One smoke grenade, one kilometer out.

At this signal, cresting the ridge, Gillken switches to proximity sonic, the third and last setting on the exterior sound array. This sound, like the sound of vast gods with cholic, rumbles and burbles with a deep bass borborygmus that shakes the Spice Collector, shakes the ground, shakes the air. As they pass over the crest, Jeskar leans over Gillikar's shoulder to look through the cabin windshield and get a look at the Sandserpent.

"HIP-HIP-HEEEEP oh my soul! What a beauty!" he yells. "Gonna be a helluva shit!"

There, just over the ridge, is a male Grossdesert Serpent, a bull, swollen and erect, its whole body surging into the sky and vibrating obscenely. Its nervous system has been hijacked by the sonic array on the collector rig, it has no way to move or escape. It can do nothing except stretch its wormlike form into the sky and tremble.

It's the size of a relatively tall man. The collector rig dwarfs it as it pulls up about ten meters away and Gillken turns up the volume.

The bullsnake raises itself to its full height, two meters or more, and bloats up suddenly. Chambers open in its sides and a rich dark ooze flows out of it all along its flanks, dripping into the sands. The smell forces its way through the thick air and the window of the cabin, in through the tiny cracks in the hermetic seal of the machine. It's rich and loamy, laden with a seedy odor of something rotten and fecund, something like a cheese that has festered to a puddle of putresence and yet somehow exudes an aroma that makes the eyes and mouth water and causes the hair at the back of the neck to raise in excitement.

Gillken and Jeskar share a frisson, an abrupt shiver that passes through them both, and the air in the cabin becomes thick with desire. Spent, the Grossdesert Serpent withers and in its wrinkled and diminished form slithers away from the dark pool it has left pooled in the sand. A visible flautus of ripe odor simmers up from the dark substance.

"Haaarp-haaarp-haaarp me lovely!" breathes Jeskar after a moment of looking into the eyes of the driver when it seems anything could occur between them. "That was a terrific serpentshit, me boy. One of the greats! Left me quite moved, I gotta say. Time to get my lads shovelling."

And he slips on his facemask and hops out of the cab, calling out to the chained squad of thralls in the flatbed of the Spice Collector. Slowly, woozily, they file out and pick up their shovels, heading for the rapidly drying mess in front of the vehicle.

Gillken lowers the spicebucket to where the shovellers are gathering, staggering and stunned like survivors of an explosion, and sees the withered worm that left the dark deposit of priceless serpentshit disappear over the ridge ahead.

===== // END OF PART FOUR // =====

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