The Great Galactic Score!

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16

When the galaxy turned away from war, it made countless trillions of people rather happy. Gone were the days when huge fleets of ships would descend upon a planet demanding surrender and their precious resources. Gone were the days when arbitrary lines drawn upon maps of the galaxy decided whether you were part of the Federation of Infidelities, or a member of the Cranial Inversion Imperium. Gone were the days of brothers and sisters trudging to war, or, more often, being transported to war in tiny transport ships where personal space became something of the past and hygiene decided it could have no part in such squalid conditions.

Of course, not everyone was happy about it. There were those that missed the days of phallic disruptors pointing at enemies and sending fiery death via torpedos that looked like the kind of liquorice sweets that every child knew was the most disgusting confectionary ever created, but ate them anyway because it made their teeth and tongue black. Which was fun.

Those people; the generals, the warlords, the tyrants, tried their very best to continue their war efforts only for the general public to sigh and wish they'd get over the whole 'subjugating and murdering people' thing and find something more productive to do with their time. Like crochet. So, they did. With practically every person within the galaxy unwilling to play their violent games anymore, the aforementioned generals, warlords, tyrants, et al, decided to retire. Partly because they could no longer recruit armies to their dubiously 'righteous' causes, but, mostly, because the galactic peace had taken the fun out of everything.

Entire planets were put aside for these people, outfitted with the very latest in virtual realities, haptic arrays and holo-matrices, and tabletop games, where they could satisfy their desires for conquest in the privacy of their own homes, in specially programmed battlefield simulators, or furiously trying to prove why Napoleon should never have lost Waterloo if he had had an intricately detailed, three-dimensional table with tiny, little painted soldiers upon it.

One such planet, the 'Shady Pines Retreat For Former Generals, Warlords, Tyrants and other Violently Pre-Disposed Persons', was where The Great Spituan had told Demi she could find War Garbler Tonbush and, inevitably, Bognrd BloodRage, the final member of Friss' crew and a vital part of whatever it was that Friss had planned. What Demi had not expected, however, was to find herself talking to War Garbler Tonbush's father, Reagatcher, listening to his many, and varied, complaints.

"And the soup? Let me tell ya, the soup! I've had better, but I can't complain." Reagatcher stood up from his motorised wheelchair, scratched his backside, adjusted the cushion and sat back down again. "Now, Grimthorn DeathClutcher, over there, he likes the soup, but, I gotta tell ya, how can you like soup that's dry. Dry! Let me tell ya, it takes a certain kind of nasty to make soup dry, but try telling that to Grimthorn. You can't. He won't listen. Watch. Hey, Grimthorn! The soup sucks!"

An elderly man, sat at a table alone, slammed his hands down onto the surface and attempted to leap to his feet. Unfortunately, his knees didn't have the fortitude of his intentions and he wobbled before sitting back down, his knees creaking and his false teeth needing to be pushed back into his mouth. Grimthorn scowled at Reagatcher and returned to studying the schematics of a particularly deadly looking warship. He sighed, tears forming in the corners of his eyes.

"That's all good and well, but what I need to know is ..." She paused as a virtual battle started in the corner of the lounge between a Uargatan cyber-monkey and a Wallakian Blow-Fish. No-one could get harmed, but it did make a noise. "All I need to know is whether you've seen your son lately? Tonbush?"

"Oy! Let me tell ya, that boy is the only one that can make a warlord father proud and exasperated at the same time. You know I bought him a hyper-dog one time. Yes, I did. All the bells and whistles. Internal mines, plasma regulators, blast repulsers. The works." Reagatcher waved a hand in dismissal. "Forget about it! He used it to attempt to annex the class next door. Great idea, terrible execution. I gotta tell ya, a hyper-dog used for infiltration and assassination? No subtlety, that boy."