Peter the Ace, Panman, and Professor AmpléBläckett Hàgênmåclídensõn were hanging by their arms two metres above the floor of the detention cell in Mister Blister’s personal chamber.

“This is quite relaxing.” Peter the Ace said. He pulled on the shackles round his wrists and began to swing gently.

Panman did the same. “Hey, your right!”

The two bounty hunters swung to-and-fro in perfect unison.

The professor was not amused. “How can you act so childishly in this situation?! We should be demanding to speak to those in charge!”

“Lighten up, professor.” Panman said, deepening his swing. “That Mister Blister dude will come and speak to us soon enough.”

“How in Dímpléhåhftên’s name can you be sure of that?”

“Because we wouldn’t have been hung up in the detention cell of his chambers otherwise.”

Peter the Ace nodded. “Doctor Charlatan is right.”

Professor AmpléBläckett Hàgênmåclídensõn grunted, and then winced with pain.

“Are you OK, professor?” Peter the Ace asked.

“Of course not!” he shouted. “Look at my wrists!”

The two bounty hunters looked. The professor’s wrists were bleeding profusely.

“My iron cuffs are much too tight!”

“They’re no tighter than ours!” Panman said truthfully. “You’re just too heavy.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re a blimp! You weigh at least twice what you should. The skin around your wrists is much to weak to support you, therefore its split - hence the blood. Your decadent academic lifestyle of rich fattening food and gallons of port before bed has turned you into a weak and overblown lard bucket.”

The professor was fuming.

Peter the Ace nodded solemnly. “I have to agree with my learned colleague.”

“How dare you speak to me like that?”

“We just tell it like it is.” Panman said. “If you can’t handle the truth then my respect for you and your scholastic achievements will disappear.”

The professor spoke sternly. “Obesity is necessary within my profession, and rightly so. A professor without excessive body mass is a professor without intelligence and perception. Without a weighty midsection to prevent him taking up sports or indulging in other healthy distractions, a professor would become un-focused and lose the ability to endlessly lecture on vague and meaningless subjects. The fact that you both seem lean and muscular, without any signs of an overhanging gut, makes me think that you are not quite the intellectual equals I once thought.”

“I think the fact that we solved in a minute that problem you had with Perpalian’s levitation thingy means that we’re actually your intellectual superiors.” Peter the Ace said.

The professor scowled. “I’m beginning to think that was a lucky guess!”

Just as Panman was about to put the professor in his place and make another reference to his elephantine belly, the executive, Chester Bolus, appeared at the thick iron bars at the front of the detention cell. He eyed the three academics before speaking.

“His lordship, Mister Blister, is on his way up here.”

“It’s about time!” Professor AmpléBläckett Hàgênmåclídensõn said.

The executive continued. “He wishes to speak with you, and then torture you.”

The professor went pale. “Torture?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because he wishes it.”

The professor was angry again. “Unbelievable! This whole business is totally unacceptable! Just you wait until my faculty hears about this!”

Executive Chester Bolus walked away. “Prepare yourselves for pain.” He said. He left the chambers via a small side exit.

The professor was frantic. “We can’t allow this!”

Peter the Ace agreed. “Indeed we can’t.” He looked up at the ceiling several metres above. Right next to the place where their chains were fastened he spotted something. “Do you see that?”

“Panman nodded vigourously. “Of course! Exactly where I would expect to find it!”

The professor looked up, confused.

Lawrence chuckled inanely to himself as he hauled the carcass of Mister Blister along a wide, dank passageway that lead away from the bridge. Just thinking how deviously brilliant he had become made him giggle with glee. Apart from the incident with the tank, his ship was a phenomenal success, and the capture of a passenger vessel with three academics on board was the icing on the cake. And to top it all, he’d just watched the bloody slaughter of most of the passengers on the main view-screen. What a glorious sight, and it was still continuing. Lawrence was recording the rest of it for his later pleasure.

Now, he must speak to his academic captives and give them something painful to think about. Because of their importance, a rescue party of bounty hunters would already be on its way - exactly as he wished. With his new vessel of devastation and doom, he’d capture them, get the location of the Palace of Amino, and then wipe them all out like kittens in a microwave.

“Ha harr!”

Lawrence rounded a corner and entered a large open space. A four metre wide bridged pond right at its centre bubbled frenetically. In the water, several reptilian beasts snapped their toothy jaws together. With a Jabba-like motion, Lawrence heaved Mister Blister over the bridge taking time to wave gaily at his cold-bloodied friends. At the other side, the evil lord of calamity wandered into an open elevator car. “Take me to my personal chambers!”

The female computer-collective responded. “AS YOU WISH.”

The doors closed. The elevator car shuddered then whined as it accelerated towards the ship’s upper section. Lawrence held on to the hand rails as the car was thrown around the contorted elevator channels - purposefully designed to induce nausea in all but the most nefarious of beings.

The elevator car decelerated rapidly and drew to a halt.

“YOU HAVE ARRIVED AT YOUR PERSONAL CHAMBERS.”

The elevator’s doors scraped open.

Lawrence stepped out. Two cloaked guards at the entrance to his chambers bowed deeply then opened the two gothic black-iron doors. Lawrence smiled as he walked in. His new chambers were freakish to the extreme! A colossal circular bed at the centre was surrounded by several small canals filled with lizards and sharks and various untamed denizens of the deep. Lawrence passed them by and wandered into the second and smaller chamber. Six green-marble columns stretched to the high ceiling where thorny vines twisted around them. Tiny bat-like creatures fluttered through the leaves.

Lawrence walked into a small passageway at the far end and turned to face the thick bars of his personal detention cell. He opened his mouth and prepared to give the foreboding speech that he’d been preparing carefully for the last ten minutes. Something important stopped him from speaking. The detention cell was empty.

Lawrence closed his eyes then opened them. Still empty. Three sets of broken shackles were swinging gently. He looked up. Up on the ceiling, the ventilation duct cover was hanging open and it was heavily dented. The demonic lord of foul dirt cracked. “Bastard edible beetle-butt featured floppy ventricles!” He slammed his fist on a nearby communications panel. “They have escaped!!”

“Who has, my lord?” executive Chester Bolus said timidly.

Lawrence punched the wall. “Who in Santa’s name do you think?!”

“But I spoke to them only minutes ago, my lord. They were securely shackled to…”

“Imbecile! Find them now or you’ll eat your own throat with relish!”

“Yes, my lord.”

Lawrence snarled, then ran Mister Blister’s carcass as fast as he could across his personal chambers. Leaping onto the giant bed, he thrashed around like a grounded fish. He began to shout some of the loudest and most loathsome profanities every heard.

Panman crawled quickly along the dimly lit ventilation shaft and laughed. He turned to look at Peter the Ace and Professor AmpléBläckett Hàgênmåclídensõn. “This is so funny!”

The professor panted like a water buffalo. “I fail to perceive the amusement!”

Peter the Ace explained. “I think Doctor Charlatan is referring to our escape route. Evil criminal masterminds always seem to design mammoth star ships brimming with weapons of mass destruction on the outside, while paying little attention to security on the inside. This shaft is a case in point. We can probably travel to any part of the ship through this ventilation system while encountering minimal resistance.”

“What can you two possibly know about evil criminal masterminds and mammoth starships?” The professor asked. “You are both academics like me, sheltered from the depraved underworld.”

“True.” Panman said, lying through his toughened battle teeth. “But we study bad guy mentality in our spare time.”

Professor AmpléBläckett Hàgênmåclídensõn shook his head, but said no more.

Up ahead, the shaft divided into four - one headed straight down. Panman keenly examined each direction.

“What do you think?” Peter the Ace asked.

“They all look the same,” Panman replied, “so I pick down. It’s less effort.”

Peter the Ace nodded. “I agree.” He turned to the professor. “We’re going down.”

The professor grunted. “So I gathered!”

Panman was first to go. He launched himself into the vertical shaft and dropped like a stone. Within a second, he’d disappeared from sight.

Peter the Ace backed himself against the wall. “Off you go, professor.”

Professor AmpléBläckett Hàgênmåclídensõn crawled by the bounty hunter and peered down the shaft. “No. I don’t think so.” He started to back up.

With a powerful contraction of his mighty servo-assisted digitally optimised quadriceps, Peter the Ace booted the professor hard on the backside. The professor shot forwards and tumbled into the mouth of the shaft. His gargling scream faded quickly.

Peter the Ace waited a few seconds for the overblown professor to gain some distance, then he too dropped into the shaft.

Lawrence ceased his bout of senseless thrashing on the bed and head-butted a communications panel on the headboard. “Update!”

The voice of one of the executives crackled over the comms system. “We have not located the academics, my lord.”

“Moron!” Lawrence snarled. He started to squeak. “Do you desire to eat your own face?!”

“No, my lord.”

“Then give me some good news!”

There was a delay in response as the executive thought of something good to say. “Almost all of the other passengers have been brutally dismembered.”

“Yes!” Lawrence screamed. “Ha harr!” He paused. “Almost all?”

“Um… Yes, my lord. Two of them seem to have fought back quite well.”

Lawrence could not believe what he was hearing. “Fought well? Against my Unholy Army of the Night?! You lie like a beagle!”

“I’m afraid it’s true, my lord, but actually, only one of them is doing any fighting. She has killed more than twenty of…”

“She!” the dark leader of despair shrieked. “A female!”

“Indeed, my lord.”

Lawrence was wild with fury. “There are over a hundred members in each legion! How can she single-handedly fend them all off?!”

“Most of the legion have settled down to eat the remains of the slaughtered passengers. Only a handful is trying to slash her but she wards them off with ease, and she is managing to protect her male companion quite successfully.”

“Show me! Display the catacomb on my chamber’s view-screen!”

The giant view-screen opposite the chamber’s massive bed flickered to life. An image of the dank catacomb appeared. Mounds of butchered bodies covered the floor, each one surrounded by several members of the Unholy Army of the Night. They were munching steadily on arms and legs and organs. Next to the wall was a particularly large mound of bodies and on top of the mound stood two people. The male of the two was cowering feebly. The female was involved in a frenzy of punches and kicks. Three of the unholy army were trying to get up to her but to no avail. They were smacked in the face at every attempt.

Lawrence was delirious with annoyance. “Who is she?”

The executive spoke. “I found her details in the passenger manifest.” A picture appeared at the left of the view-screen. “She is called Titsy Buttfest.”

“What an asinine name!”

“It is, my lord. What is interesting is that she is a companion of Professor Rottingliver and Doctor Charlatan.”

Lawrence’s eyes widened. “Really?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“This is indeed interesting.” Lawrence said, entering a thoughtful mood. “The doctor and the professor escape from my detention cell and she survives the onslaught of a legion of my Unholy Army of the Night. Is this just a coincidence, or is there more to it?”

“I don’t know, my lord.”

Lawrence screamed. “I wasn’t asking you!”

“Sorry, my lord.”

Lawrence took a few deep breaths to calm himself. “Bring her before me.”

“Yes, my lord. What about her companion?”

“Obliterate him.”

“Yes, my lord.”

The communications channel closed.

Sind’a Thighs kicked hard. Her attacker’s face gave way and caved in, leaking rancid brain matter and electronic implants. It staggered for a while, and then fell backwards. “Can you reach the duct yet?” she asked. Another attacker was climbing up towards her brandishing a rusty carving knife.

Her male companion, Digby, shook his head. “It’s still too far!”

“Use more bodies!”

He nodded and began to pull another of the dead passengers up to the top of the mound. Awkwardly, he positioned the broken body against the wall, and then clambered up it. He reached up, his fingers just managing to hook over the lower rim of the duct. “I’ve got it!”

“Then climb in!” Sind’a Thighs yelled. She leapt into the air, back-flipped, and then planted both her feet onto her rancid attacker’s chest. The speed of the impact was tremendous and the zombie was thrown back ten metres. It slammed into the metal wall of the catacomb then collapsed limply to the floor. It remained on its back for a few seconds, groaned, and then started to get back on its feet. Sind’a Thighs noticed that three more undead warriors were approaching. “Hurry!”

Digby was hanging from the duct and whimpering. He just didn’t have the strength to pull himself up.

Sind’a Thighs leapt up to the top of the mound, grabbed his feet, and then crouched down. With formidable power, she contracted her thighs and pushed up. Digby shot up into the duct. There was a resounding clang as his head slammed into its ceiling.

Several members of the grisly army had gathered at the foot of the mound of bodies and were beginning to scramble up. Now was the time to leave, Sind’a Thighs thought. With the grace of a swan, she leapt into the air, somersaulted, then, amazingly, landed in a crouched position in the entrance of the duct. She turned and looked down into the catacomb. The undead warriors were still trying to climb the mound, and some of them had stopped halfway up to have a nibble on some ribs and vertebrae. There was no way they were ever getting up into the duct. Sind’a Thighs rubbed her bloodied thighs and smiled. Her powerful quadriceps had saved her. All those intense squatting sessions in the gym had paid off, and this astonishing example of her leg’s power proved that her new bounty hunter name was the perfect choice.

She looked down the ventilation duct and noticed Digby sitting against the wall, his cloths in tatters. He was breathing heavily - obviously very unfit. Sind’a Thighs suddenly realised that she too was breathing heavily. It was very strange; the exertion of the battle was nothing for someone of her near perfect fitness level. Why would she be panting like a dog?

Then it came to her. Quickly, she got to her feet, avoiding slamming her head on the hard iron ceiling by millimetres. She walked over to Digby and stood before him. Only one thing filled her mind. “This savage incident has aroused me to previously unknown levels. I must be satisfied!”

Digby stared up at her. “What do you mean?” he asked, rubbing his bleeding head.

Sind’a Thighs unzipped her top and threw it to the floor revealing a modest but toned pair of breasts. Then she undid her mini-skirt. It dropped. She wore nothing underneath.

Digby stared at her sweaty naked body with intense pleasure.

Sind’a Thighs decided to reveal more than just her body. “I am a trainee bounty hunter from the Palace of Amino.” she said, kneeling before him. She began to tear off his clothes. “I demand that you satisfy me now!”

On hearing the momentous news, Digby looked away in shame. “I desperately want to, but I am not worthy.” he said pathetically. He shook like a leaf. “No ordinary being can ever lay a bounty hunter!”

“You’re right, you are not worthy.” she said, ripping his pants open. “But you are the only living male available right now, and that will have to do.”

Sind’a Thigh’s covered Digby’s mouth with her hand, pushed him back, and then mounted him. The finest moment of his meaningless life had begun.