SERIAL SPACE OPERA ADVENTURE

Hercula and the Golden Hydra Part 12: A Space Opera Short Story

Ten Herculaean Tasks.

Welcome to the tales of Hercula, a future renegade soldier.

Times have changed. The galaxies are run by seven massive Artificial Intelligences, who like to be thought of as gods.

Following a devastating tragedy, guided by the Artificial Intelligence, Brimstone, the renegade, Hercula has reluctantly agreed to take on ten tasks for FreezyWater, the unsavoury owner of Cellophane Station. Following her recent triumph with the Terracotta Dragon, Hercula will next face the Golden Hydra, a creature bringing ‘solace’ to the elderly on a distant world.

This is a novel in instalments, find the first instalment here. And the next instalment will be published soon.

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FreezyWater sat at his marble desk below a large image of FreezyWater Senior, the mercenary who’d founded Cellophane Station. FreezyWater Junior scowled when he saw Hercula. She was valuable to him, but an irritation. ‘’Oh, so you bothered to turn up?’’

‘’Apparently so,’’ said Hercula, picking up one of the shant sticks from Ursula’s Emulation Ball, an incredibly rare stick of solid incense harvested in Ursula’s dangerous plasma fields, the place where FreezyWater Senior had amassed a small fortune. The shant stick smelled faintly of sandalwood and burnt tar.

‘’Why are you working for me, Hercula?’’

‘’For the money.’’

‘’I know it’s not for the money.’’

‘’I like money. Here take this.’’ She tossed him over a gold coin, which FreezyWater caught adroitly, snatching it out of the air.

‘’What is this gold thing?’’

‘’It’s gold.”

“I can see that.”

“No. Its name is gold. It’s money. Old fashioned money.’’

‘’It’s a novelty I suppose.’’ FreezyWater looked at the coin for a long moment, before putting it in a desk drawer. ‘’You might or might not like money, though it hardly seems so, the way it slips through your fingers, but a mercenary like you could get a job anywhere. You obviously don’t appreciate my business subtleties, so I ask you again, why are you here, Hercula?’’

‘’I’m here because this is where I need to be.’’

‘’What’s that supposed to mean?’’

‘’I can’t put it any clearer. This is the place the universe, the sum of everything, the great collective consciousness told me that I needed to be.’’

‘’And how do you know that?’’

‘’’My guide told me, and I trust my guide.’’

‘’I suppose that’s Brimstone.’’

‘’Yes.’’ Hercula was surprised. ‘’How did you know?’’

‘’Because he’s my guide too, and he told me to hire you.’’

‘’Is that so?’’ said Hercula. She didn’t like the sound of that. Of course, on an intellectual level, she knew that Brimstone as one of the thirteen All Knowings who more or less ran the galaxies, might from time to time, chat with other people.

But Brimstone had been there for her when she’d hit rock bottom. He’d been there for her ever since just a mind thought away. Coaxing her into some semblance of normalcy.

But although, Brimstone had never said that they were exclusive. Hercula had never thought that he’d be in a relationship with FreezyWater.

She winkled a piece of food from her teeth with the incense stick. The morsel pinged out of her mouth and landed on FreezyWater’s desk causing a cleaning mouse-bot to scurry out of its hole and clear it away.

This is a novel in instalments, find the first instalment here. And the next instalment will be published soon.

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