Chapter 3: The Fish Ball

Excerpt from Strangeling v1
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“This is the worst fucking planet in the galaxy,” Enzo said, hefting his shield next to me.

The sunset glowed pink and gold on the Mississippi, and the lights of the city formerly known as Minneapolis were shimmering to life through a lavender twilight. Architecture native to a dozen worlds rose from the old human foundations of the city, arching and tangling in an opulent fantasy of galactic engineering. Overhead, a pair of sleek cruisers swooped through the dusk towards the starport. The faint strains of a string orchestra drifted out of downtown. On Bohemian Flats, floodlights flicked on and glared over a grassy field half flooded with spring meltwater.

The riverfront meadow would soon be a slimy mess of a battlefield, again. Just like it’d been once a month for the past seven years. Crowds gathered on balconies and bridges to watch the idiotic spectacle. Vendors walked through the crowd selling popcorn and cotton candy. A flock of squawking draclets flew in and took perches on the trees and floodlights, settling in as if to watch a circus performance.

If this is a circus, does that make us the dancing monkeys?

Dark ripples spread in ominous circles near the shore.

My partner in the city guard, Rellen, readied his blade. He nodded agreement and gagged at the stench wafting in from the water.

I groaned and raised my shield too. The Freeport Guards’ white and silver armored uniforms shone through the gloaming, graceful lines and high-tech fabrics well-befitting our culture’s elegant aesthetics. Our slim, curving armaments complemented them, luminous in the twilight.

The getup makes my butt look fantastic, but my hair’s too curly to come out of the helmet looking anything but flattened. The damn thing rubs my pointed ear tips, too, and coming out of battle with chafed ears is just the worst. Also, while the expensive fabric sheds visible dirt well enough, the stink from these Fish Balls does not come out nearly so easily. I washed my uniform six times after last month’s fight and still had to take it to a professional cleaner.

“Gods Between Worlds, I wish we could just fry the fucking fish men,” Rellen said, making a face at the water. He’s got straight dark hair that he ties back, and it looks fine when he takes off his helmet. “We could be done in ten seconds and never, ever have to smell them again. Or clean their crud out of our boots. And hair. And everywhere.”

It’s the “everywhere” that really gets you.

Something large breached the waves, then disappeared again below them.

“Why did they have to attack tonight?” I wailed. “Usually it’s the day after the full moon! I should be on the runway for Danielle right now. She’s going to be devastated.”

“At the starport?” Enzo asked, confused, changing his grip on the stupid spear he’d been issued. It was ceramosynth, which holds a better edge than steel but wasn’t half as good the bound nanotech weapons some of us had.

“At the drag bar,” Rellen corrected. “Danielle’s the up-and-coming designer he’s been modeling for.”

“You sure picked up some weird hobbies here on Earth, Connor,” Enzo said. Rellen nodded agreement. I rolled my eyes at the uncultured barbarians next to me.

“I found a local community that loves drinking and being fabulously beautiful,” I said. “It was a natural fit. You guys are jealous of how well I’m integrating.”

They both just stared at me for a moment.

“I’m surprised you’re only going for guys now,” Enzo eventually said. “Don’t remember you being that picky before.”

“Ha,” I said. “You haven’t seen the women who come into those bars with their gay friends.”

“Oh?” Rellen asked, perpetually rather desperate.

“Smart women with good taste,” I said. “I mean, obviously.”

“So you aren’t any pickier than you used to be,” Enzo said.

“Meh,” I said.

Okay, so I used to sleep around… a lot… back when our world was ending. I actually didn’t anymore, well, much, but why let anyone know? Far too many people already thought I was irreparably broken.

Dark shiny blobs glooped their way out of the Mississippi. Moonlight glinted on their fins and the primitive spears held in their armlike fins and tentacle-whiskers. The smaller ones were the size of dolphins, the largest almost van-sized. I hefted my sword. We were armed with ridiculously basic weaponry ourselves, stuff that’s normally backup weapons only, swords and shields and spears. Diplo thought we should meet the idiot monsters with more or less the same level of tech they used, and thus prove our superiority the old-fashioned way. Hopefully, this would lead to… something? It’d been justified like, “…blah blah respect blah blah diplomatic relations blah blah…”

Okay, I actually drank my way through the whole talk about the mutant catfish. Like many things on Earth, it was simply too loony to deal with sober. No one believed the reasoning, anyway; the fish-men were too insanely dumb to negotiate anything. Establishing diplomatic relations with them was a grim joke. Unfortunately, many people thought we’d done enough genocide lately, so even when monsters came out of the river roaring about conquest… I mean, seriously, they do… apparently now we have to dance around and act as dumb as they are.

“Are my hobbies any weirder than fighting semi-sentient fish every fucking month?” I asked. “Nothing on this planet makes sense. I’m just giving that its due. And walking in those heels is fantastic for my balance.”

The good money was on one of the older, more whimsical weapons trainers instigating the primitive weapons policy. Mostly likely it was my primary mentor, Maddoc. Further orders said we shouldn’t kill any more fish-men than absolutely necessary, which gave that some credence.

Semi-sentient fish are going to invade every full moon? I could easily imagine him saying. Great! Let’s make a training exercise out of it! Everyone use non-lethal force so we can do this again next month! These fish-men shall be the frosting on the shit-cake of our Return experience!

Except, of course, that the old man doesn’t explain himself.

“You should wear stripper heels at next month’s Fish Ball!” Rellen said. “Fifty creds say you can’t keep your balance.”

I mean, the policy makes some sense. There’s practically nothing else for the Guard to do around here. Whatever distracts from drinking, making stupid bets, and missing our annihilated homeworld, right? If the mutated catfish had been just slightly more worthy, better smelling opponents, I wouldn’t even have minded. But they were stupid, awful, and their stench got into your hair and lingered.

“I’ll double that,” Enzo said, grinning. “Hundred creds if you show up in heels. The big platform kind, at least a hand’s-breadth tall.”

After last September’s Fish Ball, we spent an evening watching old local monster movies from before the Return. We collectively decided the fish-men were Godzilla’s wet farts, risen from the deep to torment us for destroying the King of Monsters’ fan base. The sheer stench really has to be experienced to be believed.

“You guys just want me to end up with that horrendous trophy on my locker,” I answered, as more fish-men heaved themselves up onto the bank. There were more of them than usual. A lot more, though most were on the smaller side. A little frisson ran through me, a feeling that tonight’s battle could be more than we’d expected. “But seeing what Danielle could come up with as a fetish version of a Guard uniform might be worth it.”

“I can think of a few other people who might order some of those,” Rellen replied, glancing down the line of Guards.

“How often did we have to listen to the elders reminisce about the epic battles of their youth on Earth?” Enzo asked in disgust. “It’s almost too bad they killed off all the Fomorians. All we’re left with are these loser fish we could off while dressed as dancing girls.”

“We should do that. All dress up together,” Rellen said with an annoyed glance at his sword and shield. He much prefers firearms to melee weapons, sensibly enough. “It’d hardly be more ridiculous than this nonsense.”

“RELLEN! ENZO!” Captain Bhairton bellowed. “Do I hear you instigating McMann into something even dafter than that affair with the eel?”

“Sir no sir!” they answered in unison, winking at me.

“And Connor, what is department policy on embarrassing our entire civilization and culture?”

“Not more than once a year, sir!”

“Never! Try ‘never’ !”

“Yes sir, I’m trying, sir!”

“Try harder!”

I couldn’t help it. A giggle escaped me. The captain rolled his eyes at me and looked at the line of fish-men flopping their way towards us. He could say whatever he wanted; I knew he had his own bets in the pool for what the next big Connor Incident would be. Being under a century old and one of the youngest of our people came with some benefits, at least in terms of what I could get away with.

“Ready weapons!” he yelled at us. “Tech crew, we good?”

Sveta threw us a thumbs up from her floating control center. Lady Morganna, our Rí, had taken the pale, lavender-haired strangeling girl as her ward after she caught the kid robbing a Raven armory in Moscow eight years ago. Sveta is twenty-something now, looks elfin but punk, and is way too technologically proficient. She’s like a little Russian manic pixie nightmare fiend. I’d been instructed to treat her like a kid sister, and she’d more than made herself at home in that role. We couldn’t see them, but she had a swarm of tiny invisible cameras called Eyes flying through the surrounding air, ready to record the entire fight from a dozen perspectives. The biggest “fail” of the night would be made into a horrifically entertaining video clip and posted on Stellnet for the galaxy to laugh at. The guard responsible would get the world’s most awful trophy stuck to his locker all month.

So far, I’d avoided that.

My luck was about to run out.