CHAPTER 1: SHARKFUCKERS INCORPORATED

THIRTY MINUTES AND FIFTEEN SECONDS LATER, GALACTIC AVERAGE TIME.

Gizmo took a careful sip of piping hot coffee out of a particolored contraption that appeared to be the bastard love-child of an optical time-domain reflectometer and a toaster oven. He sat upon a chunk of smoking rubble that bore a disturbing similarity to the Galactic Average Thermal Regulator that contained the last remaining bits of once-famous engineer Greg. . . . He paused for a moment.

"Hey, Philo!" He called, throat still hoarse from screaming bloody murder during his recent planetfall. "Did Greg have a last name?" Philo called up from the smoking crater that marked the ship's final resting place.

"Not to my knowledge." There was a sound of shifting metal and the artificial grunts that androids make while accomplishing the sort of physical task that humans can only dream of. "He never listed one on the ship's roster, or payroll. He was always just Greg from Engineering, or Bearded Greg, or Fat Greg, or-"

"Thank you Philo." Gizmo interrupted. He took another sip of his coffee.

"Ohh, that hits the spot." He muttered through his graying mustache. He paused to brush some soot off of his standard-issue pale blue janitor's cap, before picking up a smoking hunk of what used to be a computer, examining it carefully, and tossing it dejectedly over his shoulder. It made a satisfactory THUNK as it hit Philo square in the chest. He didn't seem to notice.

Gizmo took a long look across the nigh endless mud flats they had crash-landed in, taking a last long glance at the farmhouse sitting pretty on the horizon. He could see the tell-tale steam signal of a large vehicle barreling down on his position, however, it was still too far out to venture a guess as to whom the pilot was.
He pulled his cap down against the burning noon sun, and wrinkled his nose at the miasma the ship had kicked up. Imagine the bastard child of a slow-roasted dirt-slug and three-day-old compost and you have something that absolutely pales in comparison to the reeking hell Gizmo was suffering through.

The only clue to his distress was his slowly twitching mustache, writhing like some Abyssal Murderpillar.

"Sir!" Philo called. "I found the Galactic Valet! It seems to be in perfect working condition!"

"Good! Toss it up this way!" Gizmo jumped to his feet and clapped his hands together, like he was back on the fields of Faber IV, about to join in a game of Arborean Hyperball.

A lunchbox-sized clump of dirt went sailing past Gizmo's hat. Gizmo began to rue building Philo's arms out of industrial kitchen mixers, then remembered exactly how awesome that was, and ceased his ruing. From the brief glimpse its arc allowed, Gizmo came to realize several things. The first and most important was exactly how beyond functional the Valet really was. Everything else concerned how exactly fucked the crew was, now that the Valet was broken.

You see, a Galactic Valet is what one might call a “black box” if they're retarded. Contained within the Valet is the identities of every crewmember on board, along with the ship's registration, itinerary, and several other things that may become important later on.

Each lifeboat is equipped with a Valet that's just a copy of the main ship's Valet. The main ship was currently blown to seven different kinds of shit, and the life-boat had exploded like an overripe banana in the damp hell of Bochco.
The surviving members of the Perse assault on Doctor Clockwerx's Deathatarium had, effectively, vanished off the face of the universe.

“Fuck.” Gizmo said slowly. He pushed the brim of his cap up off his forehead, itched at the little beads of sweat marching down his thinning hairline, and re-adjusted his cap. “Fuck.” He said, this time a little more assertively. He gazed out at the horizon, at the rapidly-approaching dot that he hoped beyond hope was Captain Ennings. “Philo” he called. “We're going to be leaving shortly, have you finished collecting the cargo?”

“Affirmative, sir.” Philo called from the pit. “Wait, I think I've found something. Would you like to see, y/n?”

“Sure.” Gizmo called, eyes still on the rapidly growing dot on the horizon. He could pick out the occasional odd shape floating circling around the ship, like the orbital rotator transistors usually seen on older-model ion engines, but they were far too large to be practical. He was thoughtfully rubbing his beard stubble when a large chunk of gray and pink rubber landed next to him.

“Well, that's. . .” Gizmo made an uneasy noise in the pit of his throat.

“Insulation?” Philo climbed out of the pit and stood next to him, wiping his hands on his pants.

“No sir, that's no insulation.” Philo said. “That there's a shark.”

“No.” Gizmo shook his head. “What makes you say that?” Philo nudged a triangular protrusion with the toe of his boot.

“Insulation doesn't have fins, sir.”

“Oh, damn.” Gizmo's head jerked up. “So that means-” Gizmo was now able to pick out the sound of the Captain's voice coming from the ship, now a blot the size of the average human thumb and rapidly growing. Philo waved at the captain while Gizmo scrambled up the first stack of boxes.

“Philo! Dirtsharks! Get off the ground NOW!” He shouted.

“Would do, sir, but I don't think we're at risk here.” Philo said calmly.
“But. . . Dirtsharks!”

“Sir, if we were at risk here, don't you think the sharks would have attacked by now?” Gizmo paused mid-apoplectic-panic. “It's my theory that the concussion from us punching through the topsoil drove them away from the area pretty quickly.” Philo stooped and picked up a handful of the damp muck. “Or it's possible that all the heavy metals we just introduced into the topsoil drove them off.” He turned and looked up at Gizmo. “Dirtsharks are very sensitive about these sort of environmental disturbances, you know.” Gizmo nodded slowly.

“Fascinating. Do you have a gun?” Philo shook his head.

“We gave them to Parson, remember?” Gizmo grimaced, and clung tighter to his box, as the truck grew ever closer.

“Of course we did. Keeping them, now that would have been a good idea.”


Ennings and Parson showed up moments later.

“FUCK ! THE TRUCK SHIT IN GET!” Ennings shouted as the hovertruck spun to a halt.
“WHAT HE MEANT TO SAY WAS, 'GET THE SHIT IN THE TRUCK!' FUCK!” Parson shouted shortly after. A hatch on the side of the trailer popped open and Philo started tossing in crates like they were Christmas hams. Parson climbed on top of the lime green cab with a protein disruptor rifle and started picking off Dirtsharks that got too close. Gizmo hopped off of his stack and dragged the Galactic Average Thermal Regulator to the trailer hatch, heaving it inside.

“Gizmo!” Captain Ennings shouted, firing wildly from his pistol “Get on top of the cab and get firing!” Ennings tossed the pistol to Gizmo, who flailed wildly for it before tripping over the tell-tale explosion of mud that signaled the arrival of a Dirtshark. It reared its ugly head, snapping its many rows of teeth together, trying to get a piece of Gizmo, before Parson lit it up faster than a pyromaniac's Menorah.
Granted, a protein disruptor rifle doesn't so much “set shit on fire” as it does “reduce organic material to a gray sloppy mess”, which had then exploded onto Gizmo's one good jumpsuit. His mustache frowned mightily.

“Sir! I need to attach the thermal regulator to a power source or Greg's head is going to decay!” Gizmo shouted while firing wildly at the sharks leaping around the truck. He crouched near the cab, keeping his back pressed against the door.
Suddenly, his gun jammed.

“Shit!” He shouted. “I didn't think energy-based weapons could jam like that!” The ground in front of him erupted into a yawning pit of sharp, vicious teeth. A scarred, blue-gray head emerged, the approximate size and shape of an Antedilluvian Giga-porter, the largest of all terran buses.

See, the Antedilluvian Giga-porter is capable of transporting no less than two homophobic football teams in a single trip, with seats carved out of whole Betelguisian Star-Buffalo. Basically, the thing ranks a “Holy Shit” on the Heisenbergian Scale of Hugeness.

“IT'S THE QUEEN SHARK!” Ennings screamed. “PARSON, WE NEED MOVEMENT!”

“CAN'T, SIR!” Parson screamed back, taking careful aim at the Queen Dirtshark. “I'M NOT TECHNICALLY IN THE COCKPIT.”

“RIGHT SORRY FORGOT ABOUT THAT.” Ennings screamed while attempting to rev the Hoverengine, draw another weapon from beneath the seat, and close the cargo hatch all at once.

Philo, tossing the last crate into the bay with one hand, saw Ennings pull forth the G.A. Inhibitor Mach 12 “Warcrime” automatic energy rifle, a gun so prodigiously lethal that it has to be belt-fed giganium power cores. Philo grabbed Gizmo by the collar and pulled him into the hold, just as the doors slammed closed.

“FUCK ON THIS SHIT ASSTARD!” Ennings screamed as the Warcrime kicked into gear. The twelve barrels kicked into action, spinning quickly, before unleashing a flood of superheated plasma straight into the Queen Dirtshark's vacuous maw.

It reacted in much the same way every large creature reacts to a flood of superheated plasma punching a hole through its skull. Namely, it howled in rage and attempted to bite the truck in half. However, by that point, the magnetic turbines began to spin the truck in a wide circle, whisking it away from the titanic jaws just in the nick of time.

However, the sudden jolt of movement knocked Parson straight on his ass. He rolled ass-over-head, right off the roof of the cab. He managed to deftly catch his fingertips on the edge of the window, swinging him feet-first into the driver's seat, accidentally kicking both the steering wheel and his superior square in the back of the head. Parson's rifle dropped to the cab floor, lodging itself firmly between the accelerator and gear-shift.

The whole rig kicked forward and began to fly across the mud-flats like a Pandemonic Rape-Bat out for a night on the town.

“GOD DAMMIT PARSONS TURN THIS SHIT-HAULER AROUND!” Ennings roared. “I WANT TO SHOOT THAT BITCH AGAIN.”

“CAN'T SIR THE PEDALS ARE JAMMED SIR AAAAAAH OH GOD.” Parson screamed, narrowly avoiding collision with a wayward Dirtshark. “AAAAAAH COULD YOU TAKE CARE OF THAT SIR I'D MUCH APPRECIATE IT OH GOD.” Ennings reached for the gun and pulled, only to have it accidentally go off in his hands. It blew a sizable hole in the bottom of a glove compartment, releasing a flurry of papers. A small brown moleskin notebook landed on Enning's foot. He picked it up, thumbed forward to the end, and began reading backwards.

“OH ALMIGHTY MERCIFUL SPACEJESUS WHAT DOES IT SAY?” Parson asked as hard as he could.
“THEY WERE FARMERS.” Ennings barked, voice growing hoarse. “DRIVEN OFF BY THE DIRTSHARKS.”

“DAMN WHATAPITY.” Parson cried out. “IS THE QUEEN STILL FOLLOWING US?” Ennings stuck his head out the window, noted the giant dirt-tumor that was keeping pace with the hovertruck, turned back to Parson, and nodded.