Joe and Gala, Chapter Two

With battle-wearied bodies nearing their last vestiges of strength, Gala and Joe were swinging and slugging at less than half the speed of before. There was something however keeping them going, something each had found within one of the darker and less-travelled recesses of themselves, as slowly parrying they stumbled into some boiler-room deep in the fungus-ship’s bowels. Here the environment more than suited the combatants’ mood. Shapes that did not bear close inspection hulked in the murk, and the walls and floor were awash with horrid slime secreted by these giant glands to lubricate the constant peristalsis of this living craft.

A volley of flame-bolts glinting like poison-darts steadily forced Gala out of sword-range, though she continued to deflect the projectiles with the flat of her blade. One made it through, knocking her reeling through the mire, and Joe followed it up thus:

“The very term on which I insisted when we agreed to co-operate – the one condition that stood throughout the Collective’s life! Flashtease was not to be harmed. My first stipulation, Gala! Now I see in what respect you held our mutual enterprise from the very outset. That alone would be sufficient reason for me to see this act of justice through!”

“Do you ever listen to yourself?” Gala flung back, clutching the burnt and charring weal on her upper arm. “All that self-righteous Four Heroes posturing about teamwork and equality…and yet there we have it, the sum total of what working with you ever amounted to. No leaders, but everyone’s got to do exactly what you say. You don’t care what I actually did to that little brat in his ridiculous miniskirt – you just can’t stand being disobeyed! You’re obsessed with control, Joe!”

She lunged at him and they closed in a grapple, pitting sinew against exhausted sinew as Gala slowly pushed against the resistance of Joe’s arm to stab her cutlass down.

“Anyone who’d researched your life would see that right away,” she continued, hissing the words into his face through gritted teeth. “Just how young was the girl when you set her up in your spare bedroom and started molding her into your future romance? Talk about rescuing her from abusive kidnappers. Out of the frying pan is more like it.”

Neetra was a sensitive point and Gala knew it, but though Joe’s hold faltered momentarily he renewed it with increased vigour, denying his foe the opening she sought.

“Now though, she even cuts you out of her telepathic messages,” Gala persisted wickedly. “She escaped you at last. So much for her obedience.”

“And was there one member of the Next Four who acknowledged your leadership by the end?” Joe snarled back. “You speak of your paranoia, not mine.”

Gala’s eyes blazed. In a spurt of fury she wrested her sword-hand free of his grasp, and the blunt hilt-end jabbed deep. Joe creased in half, winded from the clumsy blow, and splattered to Gala’s feet amid the goo.

“My paranoia?” she repeated in a roar. “My leadership?”

She kicked at him, driving the toecap of her boot sharply into his stomach.

“If my leadership was so flawed,” railed Gala, “how come you’re the one down there?”

More vicious kicks ensued in a frenzied torrent. Soon Gala was almost palpitating from the effort, but nevertheless she strove with everything left in her lungs to maintain a stream of taunts and invective as accompaniment. “I hope you hate the thought – hope it makes you sick with hate – just thinking about her in that other galaxy – she’ll have the local boys queuing up – everyone getting a share of that first taste – everyone but you!”

She flung herself down in the putrid puddles beside Joe’s sprawling frame, thrusting one knee hard into the small of his back, and grabbed a handful of his long hair to drag his head level with hers.

“I’m glad you were in love with her,” she spat in his ear. “If you hadn’t been, it wouldn’t hurt you like this.”

So saying she threw him at the ground chin-first and stood, pulling back her leg for another kick. “And this time you can save the lies about how you don’t look at her that way,” Gala cackled breathlessly in triumph. “Draxu showed me enough. Such noble thoughts from the first of The Four Heroes! Speaks absolute volumes about what your precious cause really was. When the pompous pronouncements finally fall silent that’s all you’re left with, nothing but Four Heroes hypocrisy and lust – ”

Joe’s hands snapped into a fast snare about her foot even as she shot it at his face. The next second all was aflame, and Gala screeched as a fearsome power seldom turned on fellow humans tore up her ankle and her calf and thigh. Her leather breeches shredded to ash along the whole of one leg while the boiler-room’s foulness choked itself amid the unspeakable stench of skin scorching alive. Gala hit the mucus-pools writhing and flailing, while Joe rose to his feet and declared:

“You might recall I learned from Draxu something of your tastes in return. And I would be most flattered, but that you repel me utterly. A sentiment I am certain I would share with any who once imagined they knew you – any, even those boasting far closer ties than my own!”

His meaning was clear. Gala, already struggling back upright, fired at him a look with death in it and bellowed: “Leave my mother out of this!”

“A killer, a torturer and a supervillainess!” Joe yelled back mercilessly. “If she could look upon her only daughter now, the sight would disgust her!”

Even with a leg out of action, Gala remained terrifyingly fast. Indeed, it was only her injury that afforded Joe time enough to shift most of his torso away from the cutlass-slash that would otherwise have split him in two, and still Gala’s blade sheared cleanly through his clothes and carved a flesh-wound cruelly deep. Blood fanned and blotted while Joe struck the wall behind him with a crash, gasping for very life.

“At least I cared!” Gala screamed at him through gushing tears, her voice raw. “All I wanted to do was save her, and all of them, even though I was just a helpless child! But you? Little spoiled rich boy who didn’t so much as register what his parents were feeling! Not until the very day you walked into your living-room, and noticed that they’d – ”

Joe’s fist swung out in a mighty roundhouse and smashed without stopping into the side of her jawbone. Gala’s feet left the floor, and her body followed her head around in two diagonal twists before any part of her came in contact with land again. But mere seconds after that splashdown was achieved, Joe was on top of her and there were no more words. All the pair knew were fists and feet and knees and teeth, as tangled together all tearing and wrenching and gouging at each other they steadily sank into the thick and rancid ever-seeping slime.

END OF CHAPTER TWO