Chapter Text
The bowels of the starship were dark, cold, and depressing.
Happily, I lived in the Captain's Quarters. This was not by choice, and it came with it's share of problems, but it was luxurious nonetheless.
I rose from my recuperacoon, washed the slime off my body and out of my gills, and shone my horns in my ablution block. Taking the elevator up to the bridge, I contacted my first mate on the intercom.
"Officer Tenbra. Report."
"Present Captain!" Came the reply, in his weirdly-accented voice."Maintaining course for Aldred!"
"Very well. See you on the bridge, Officer."
"Yes, sir."
The doors opened, and I stepped onto the bridge. Seeing Tenbra standing at the main console, I hurried over to him.
"Officer. Where are we?"
He saluted. "Captain. Halfway to Aldred, sir. We may have to stop at Belkar for resupply, however."
"Good. At ease, Officer."
He stopped saluting. "Thank you Captain. I thought my arm was going to fall off if I kept it up any longer."
I frowned. "You sure you don't need to see the Mediculler? I mean, you only got hit, what, last perigree?"
"Yeah, but she said I'd need about two, so..."
"Ok. Tell me if you need to talk." I leveled my gaze at him. "Diamonds are important."
"Not in the bridge, Captain." he pleaded, and I decided to relent for now.
"Keep the ship on our course, unless we really have to change it. Our orders are to get to Aldred as soon as trollishly possible."
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Aldred was a very nice planet, emphasis on was. Roughly twelve sweeps ago, construction had finished on one of the largest Funhouses ever designed, and since then many Priests of the Messiahs not yet ready to join one of their orders had taken it up as a favourite pilgrimage spot. The resulting ambient chucklevoodoo field had driven most of the other residents of the planet insane. The Priests had found it hilarious, of course.
We were to arrive at the Funhouse spaceport, and pick up a new passenger - a Priest on his final test to become a Laughsassin. I was ecstatic about this, of course, but orders were orders.
Once we had picked him up, he was to tell us his mission. I hoped he would be forthcoming, and not as humourously cryptic as his order could be. I'm pretty sure that we're just not in on the joke.
Who knows? Maybe we're the punchline.
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Two perigrees later, we had arrived. Aldred loomed in the viewscreens. Loomed was definitely the word, too, a sense of foreboding settling across the crew, even as most of them had been trained to resist psionic attacks. Such is the power of the chucklevoodoo.
"Are you sure we actually have to land there, Captain?" Tenbra asked me, a look of resignation on his features, "You know most of the crew is sensitive."
It was true. While the Knife of the Angels had a violet Captain, the second-highest troll on board was a teal-blood, named Hariet if I recalled correctly (which I did. It was a requirement of office, remembering all crewmembers names). I was the most psychically resistant onboard, and I was feeling terror emanating from my every pore.
"Sadly, yes. Tell all crew below olive to retreat to their recuperacoons, with their moirails if possible. Once we've left the system, rouse them and have the telepaths wipe their thinkpans of the chucklevoodoo remnants. For now, switch from Helmsman power to reserve batteries, then give me the helm and go to my quarters. Stay there until I get you, ok?"
"Yes, Captain." He said. "Thank you."
"It's alright. Tell the crew they're off-work for the next day while I negotiate a resupply, and get our... guest aquainted with the ship. That includes you, Tenbra." Before he could argue, I grabbed him into the palest hug I could without it devolving into "Lewd Acts Aboard Ship, In Public". That could get me courtmartialled, if anyone on the ship cared - and with trolls, always better safe than sorry.
He smiled. "Ok, then. Good luck Borgan. You're gonna need it."
With that, he left my embrace and walked to the ship-wide announcement desk. Quickly relaying my orders, and making a swift diamond with his fingers, he entered the dedicated elevator to my quarters.
As the doors closed, I felt a chill go through my body. Not the pleasant kind one gets when their gills feel actual water, or when your kismesis' blood is on your hands and they're limping away, but the kind when you wake up from a sopor-less sleep, and you can't quite remember the dreams you had, and you don't want to. This wasn't going to be fun, and neither would be actually having a Priest onboard.
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When the ship entered the Funhouse airspace, and the automated docking procedures took control from me, I was terrified. When the boarding ramp lowered, and I saw a squad of Subjugglators in honor guard formation, I was wishing for Tenbra. When I had to walk down said ramp, past the hulking figures, each with a stained club in their hands, I was hoping for Gl'Bogolyb's sweet embrace.
I maintained my composure, however. This was exactly the response they were attempting to arouse, these feelings of fear and despair, hopelessness and lust for death. I cleared my mind, and focused on Her Imperious Condescension, the greatest of all leaders, the most grand being in the multiverse, with globes to mat- No. I would not go down that road. While a general regard for the Condesce as attractive was conducive to survival, lacking it being a culling offence, so too was fantasising about her, and raising yourself above your station, even if only in your own mind.
My thinkpan was racing, it's metaphorical wheels spinning as I distracted myself from, not my environment, but the feelings it generated by both it's design and inhabitants. I was eventually led by a small purple-blooded troll, still with her first markings, to a room in which I was then told by her, in between the profanity and suggested lusus-fornication, I was supposed to wait to meet my companion on this assignment from the Empress.
When he arrived, I was struck by how small he was. While perfectly normal for most adult trolls, for a member of the purple-blooded caste he was shockingly diminutive in stature.
Then I remembered he was a Laughsassin, not a Subjugglator, and realised that I would never have normally forgotten that.
He spoke, and when he did I noticed that while his mannerisms were in line with his peers, his voice and accent were far more analogous to the great Librarindoctrinators, and their more refined, cultured mode of speech. The effect was unsettling, to say the least.
"Well done, my motherfucking ocean-bro. Usually my targets take a lot more motherfucking time to figure out what I'm all up and motherfucking doing to their thinkpan. And, yeah, I learnt at the Academerciless Institute, but then I found my motherfucking calling in the work of the Messiahs. Good fucking job on that one, friend."
So, he could read my mind with the chucklevoodoos, and I couldn't feel his intrusion. Fucking great. My patience was already being tested by being here, and I was honestly freaking out, and no matter how well I hid it - perfectly, for the record - he would know. Brilliant.
"Yeah, bro, I know. And it's all up and motherfucking miraculous that you're doing it too. But we've got a motherfucking mission straight from the Condescension her motherfucking self. We're gonna catch ourselves some motherfucking traitors!" He cackled at that, and I was immediately even more worried than I had been. I would do my duty to the Empire, but this was serious motherfucking trouble. Wait...
"Please, my friend, get the fuck out of my head."
He only laughed louder.