Any Other Tuesday
By RJGlynn

[This short story was written for round 3 of the Ultimate SciFi Smackdown 2021-2022. It follows on from the events of round 1 and 2 stories (The Saviour, Red Pill, and Beyond Liberty), and had to include a cat, a big dumb object (BDO), and a cooking recipe with ingredients and instructions. Reader advisory: Don't try the recipe at home; it and the story contain traces of horror. All rights are reserved by the author.]

Vibrating darkness. Bioluminescence, an otherworldly glow, revealing fungi-smothered ship bulkheads, spilled supplies, and at least thirty corpses suspended on hooks.

The SS Adiona's main cargo hold. The remains of her crew, eight weeks dead.

Janus cast a jaundiced eye over them from within his spacesuit's helmet, then turned to secure the electronic airlock hatch he'd just 'charmed' his way through, a.k.a. hacked.

Damaged, misappropriated ship. Rotting, mutilated bodies.

Just another Tuesday in the outerworlds.

The glowing, oozing fungi, however, was novel ... interesting.

"I know we came looking for corpses." A cool voice cruised over his helmet comm, strong enough to cut through rumbling engine noise, feminine enough to knot his gut. "But I didn't expect this."

Looking past his face shield's heads-up display, Janus eyed the woman watching his back. Encased in a black, armor-reinforced spacesuit, she merged with the gloom, but his HUD's infrared showed more.

A darkly shielded gaze aligned with a raised P50 plasma pistol.

Liberty McQueen. His current client—and current reason to drink bad whiskey. Ex-Agency. A government operative gone rogue. While her upper-class origins graced her with beauty and charm, any eyelash-batting smiles she aimed his way were as calculated as any sniper shot.

And even knowing that...

Janus acknowledged his heart's unsettled beat with amusement, then dismissed it. He was an outerworld mutt turned grey-market intel and service broker, an asset for the ex-spy to use. The only thing the woman cared about was keeping her brother, Kiran, out of her ex-employer's hands. The highly shady organization had a keen interest in the attack that'd killed the man's former crew—its unusual circumstances and consequences.

'Unusual,' as in there'd been contact with multiple extra-terrestrials in uncharted space.

'Consequences,' as in Kiran should've been dead, but had returned to known space alive—and able to read minds.

Shaking his head, Janus drew his pistol. Yeah, another Tuesday in the 'Outers.' Others might balk at the idea of someone getting killed by one alien species then resurrected and given psychic abilities by another, but he made his living in the universe's grey zones, going places others didn't, wouldn't, or shouldn't. He'd seen plenty of alien and weird; lived with it. His co-pilot, a lab-rescued chihuahua with a drool problem, had an IQ close to 200.

Lifting his weapon, he turned his attention to his latest 'odd job': a hold full of bodies, the oozing meal a bioluminescent fungus was slowly consuming.

With help.

The kind that involved a butcher's knife and a junkyard rat's constitution.

Beside him, Liberty moved forward, her grace turned up to lethal. "Do I even want to know where all the arms and legs have gone?"

"Darlin', you serve up a smorgasbord of protein on the edge of civilized space, you'll get Raveners coming to the table." Janus checked his HUD: No biohazard alerts. The recent knife damage was also reassuring. If the cannibalistic scavengers still utilized the dead, the fungal growth wasn't acutely toxic.

"This 'protein' was already a week old when the ship returned to known space." Liberty's face shield hid her expression, but he easily pictured the dark brow she'd have lifted over killer blue eyes. That look of cynical doubt was all too often aimed his way. "At this point, dinner is two months overdue last rights."

"Raveners don't consider their snacks old 'til they're pure maggot. Then they think of them as fresh maggots."

"Glass-half-full types then."

Janus summoned a smile. "Beautiful, it takes a twisted brand of optimism to survive the Outers' churn." And to drag one's scraggy ass out of it even part way, like he had.

Liberty shifted to get an angle on the hold's internal exit. "Not picking up comms activity." Pale electrical lighting winked beyond the damaged door as it jittered, riding the vibrations of the ship's sub-warp propulsion drive. No other signs of movement. "Any chance our vultures raided what they could, then flew away?" Cool doubt in every syllable.

"They cold-stored the travel snacks, yanked the transponder, and set autopilot to take their prize home." Deeper into lawless space. "Darlin', wherever they've flown off to, they'll be back. I suggest we make the most of the quiet and get our boogie on."

"Well, you did promise me dancing when we first met."

Janus stifled a sigh, acknowledging again the optimism that kept mongrel hearts like his beating. Whatever it took to impress Liberty McQueen, it wasn't a heavily tattooed ex–gutter mutt with a penchant for slum-brewed whiskey and lost causes.

He aimed his helmet tech at the dead; got to work grabbing x-ray IDs. Unfortunately, every corpse needed scanning. Decomp, missing limbs, and prolific fungal growth prevented a more targeted search.

That for a dark-haired woman of average height and build.

Pandora Sahar. The only member of the Adiona's crew besides Liberty's brother to return to known space alive. She'd encountered the same brain-manipulating extra-terrestrial Kiran had.

Unfortunately, she hadn't survived the welcome home.

Her last act in life had been to load her unconscious, alien-resurrected crewmate into a shuttle, set its autopilot, and lead the Raveners away.

Janus nixed the desire to find the woman simply to give her soul what peace he could. In the Outers, honor took a backseat to good sense. "If we find our girl, autopsy's not likely to show much." Despite the cold, the fungus had completely claimed the dead—the entire hold. It even oozed from walls and the deckhead.

Liberty kept checking bodies. "We recover what's left of her brain. Slim chance or not, I need a lead on what was done to Kiran."

"Whatever floats your boat, beautiful. But do me a favor—ask your brother about these toadstools." Janus eyed the mushroom-type fruiting bodies and fan-like growths protruding through thick slime. He'd broken into too many clandestine labs to not recognize an alien when he saw one.

"Yeah, we've likely got a foreign hitchhiker," Liberty agreed. "Hold one sec."

Janus finished his row of corpses. He'd started working his way back towards Liberty on hers when she finally reported back.

"Kiran doesn't recall the fungus, but thinks the alien that hotwired his brain was familiar with it," she summarized. "When I described the growth, the word 'vehicle' popped into Kiran's head, along with something like excitement or affection. Kiran likened it to his feelings towards the skyjet he flew as a teenager. He thinks the alien views this growth as some kind of 'entertaining' transport technology."

"Didn't the alien consider Kiran a 'vehicle'?"

"Yup. As a non-corporeal entity, it likely considers all physical life transport—even glow-in-the-dark toe jam."

Janus found himself next to Liberty, armored shoulder to armored shoulder, the check of the row complete. "Our girl's not here."

"She was alive when the ship was taken. She might've been held elsewhere."

Swallowing pity for anyone Raveners took alive, Janus lifted his weapon and moved to the hold's internal door. He checked his sensors for signs of life in the next storage bay: none.

After a nod from Liberty, he triggered the door release.

Liberty swept forward, pistol up—stopped. "Oh, this isn't good."

Janus followed her in. Cool LEDs lit the bay. Not that they were needed. Bioluminescent slime smeared every surface—every container and utensil in what appeared to be a manufacturing line. Buckets of ooze sat under tables crowded with jugs, spatulas, and plastic trays.

Liberty eased up to the nearest table; eyed the final product: glowing blue cubes, nicely bagged. "What the hell are they making?"

"Grouser's Funky Fudge."

"Excuse me?"

Janus nodded to the bulkhead beside her, to glowing graffiti-like smears. "'One tub zombie juice, five cups crushed candy, snort of Scabby Bob's moonshine," he translated. "Then 'muck it, hot it 'til neck short, trowel, and cold dice.' In other words, stir it, boil until reduced to a quarter, pour into a tray, and cut into cubes when set.'"

"They're making fungus fudge?"

"They're making product for the Outers' chem market. What's the bet our resident alien exudes an entertaining psychoactive?"

"Hell." Liberty snagged a sample and tucked it into a pocket. "That's probably what the idiots are doing right now. Off distributing extra-terrestrial candy to all the other braindead children. We need to find out what's in this and whether its capable of seeding further infections. I don't like what it's done to this ship. The spread is massive. I swear it's in every—"

Motion alert: fast-moving body on heat scan.

Janus swung to face the threat—relaxed as he recognized the incoming form.

A cat; scrawny, mange ridden.

But its patchy grey fur was the least disturbing thing about it.

Eerie blue eyes. Discolored skin—with glowing veins. To weird things up further, a severed finger hung out of its whiskered mouth.

Janus shook his head at the feline. "Sweetheart, I'm not going to even ask."

The cat padded up, tail held high; rubbed its head against his legs.

"No," Liberty said in his ear.

"No, what?"

"You are not adopting it. You already have one freak extra-terrestrial pet."

"More company for your 'freak extra-terrestrial' brother, beautiful."

"You think Lai will agree? Despite his enhanced brain, he's still a crotch-sniffing, feline-chasing canine."

Janus looked to the cat, knowing Liberty had a point. "Glow Bug can make her own decisions. If she wants to come with us..."

"He's named it," Liberty threw up her hands, then looked downward sharply. "And it's already leaving him 'gifts.'"

Catching the glint of metal amongst gnawed flesh, Janus crouched to inspect the offering. Mouth curving, he gave the cat a rough head scratch, sending it into purring ecstasy. "Who's a beautiful, clever girl?"

Liberty snorted. "Next time you call me 'beautiful,' I'm going to think of that wretched fleabag and know for sure you're full of shit."

Janus held up the finger. "The manicure's pure cannibal, but the crew access ring looks like the former captain's."

Liberty grabbed the mauled item. "You're right, the cat's a stunner. We access the ship's security feeds, we might find footage of what happened to the crew—Kiran—and narrow our search for Sahar."

Janus straightened. "FYI, if you got yourself mange, you'd still be the most beautiful creature I've ever seen." Growing up in the Outers, one learned to looked beyond a person's infestations.

Snorting, Liberty started for the ship's bridge. "I've seen the company you keep. The competition is pitiful—and usually part alien."

Unable to argue, Janus moved to follow.

The cat jumped in his way.

Arching its back, it rubbed his legs, then paced to the left, towards a storeroom, came back, rubbed again—returned to the storeroom to paw its locked door.

Janus narrowed eyes. The Betsy Bop, the rust bucket he'd docked to the Adiona, currently had an alien-altered mind-reader and enhanced dog on its crew. Vetoing the possibility a cat infected with an extra-terrestrial fungus might have an agenda beyond head rubs seemed like poor form.

He turned left.

"We're not—" Liberty sighed. "We're following the cat."

Weapon up, Janus signaled Liberty to unseal the door.

With a tap of the severed finger in her hand, the door slid open to reveal—

Bodies. Five entangled in a heap. All in the piecemeal armor of void scavengers. All half buried in the overgrowth of fungus that'd taken over the confined space.

The cat bound over the dead to leap onto a waist-high mound. It started purring and pawing at the mass, claws dislodging slime and delicate blue mushrooms.

Janus sidestepped the dead to get a look at—"Shit." Disbelief thundered through him. A female face could be clearly seen through a layer of ooze—which bubbled as air escaped.

An exhalation.

He rammed his pistol back into its holster; started ripping away alien growth. "It's Sahar. I think she's still breathing."

"What?" Liberty rushed to help. "No way. How many lives does this woman hav—?" She cut off as slime started pouring from the ceiling, bulkheads, and the deck. "We've triggered some kind of defense—"

Kiran broke in over comms, transmitting from the Betsy: "Ravener ship's just blinked out of warp. ETA two minutes."

"Prime engines," Liberty ordered her brother and tore into slime and fungus. "Janus, we can't leave her."

Not about to disagree, Janus hurried to extract the unconscious Sahar. No easy or quick task. He bit back his own oath as a slow-motion slime waterfall fell over him and rising ooze sucked at his boots. Whatever the fungus was, it was not happy.

He finally pulled loose a light-brown arm, slick with alien goo but healthy. A singlet-covered torso came next, then—after a yank—hips and legs. Relief came with deepening unease. What kind of fungus had rules about who or what it consumed?

Kiran's taut voice again: "The Raveners have docked. You need to get out of there—now."

Janus hauled Sahar over his shoulder; turned for the door—froze as the slime at his feet convulsed.

The dead Raveners.

Liberty snapped her pistol up. "I'm picking up bioelectricity—primitive nerve activity. But no heartbeats."

Janus gripped his unconscious burden with one hand, drew his sidearm with the other. His mind flashed back to a hold full of corpses missing limbs. "I'm starting to appreciate our fudge cook's 'zombie juice' reference."

"Oh, that's a hard 'nope.'"

A crackling flash of plasma: Liberty turning reanimated flesh to blackened ooze.

"That's my kind of cooking, beautiful."

A strident yowl. The cat raced to the door, looked back, yowled again—just as a red light flashed on the other side of the bay outside.

An airlock in use.

"Kitchen just got hotter." Liberty aimed her pistol at the airlock as it hissed open. "Twenty tangos incoming!"

Janus sprinted for the main cargo hold, following the bounding heels of the cat.

Wild shouts and hoots sounded, along with enthusiastic calls for 'people bacon.'

Then a concussive bang.

Ballistic weaponry.

Janus dove into the hold's gloom, Liberty beside him.

Bullets slammed into bulkheads and crates; tore chunks out of the remains of the Adiona's crew.

Plasma ripped the darkness open next: Liberty buying some running room.

The cat—a glowing streak—straight-lined it to the airlock, no prompting needed.

Screams.

Janus looked over his shoulder—did a doubletake.

Raveners weren't the only ones racing through the gloom. Multiple glistening black forms lunged and leapt, taking down the cannibals in screaming heaps.

The corpses Liberty had plasma baked.

Pulse accelerating, Janus laid down cover fire, allowing Liberty to catch up.

Movement—beside him. Suspended corpses writhed, dead nervous systems unnaturally triggered.

"Fuck." Janus fired off another plasma bolt, gut locking. Liberty had wanted answers about how an alien had resurrected and neurologically altered her brother. Maybe she'd just got them.

A storm of wayward bullets, the Raveners' aim straight up panic.

Ducking, Janus sprinted for the airlock with Liberty.

He reached it; hit the controls—

A sledge hammer blow to his side.

He fell against the airlock, head light, knees threatening to give. He didn't need to look down to know a Ravener had got off a lucky shot—a hit between armor plates.

And he didn't need to feel the gush of wetness to know after thirty years of sliding through the brutal filth of the outerworlds, his luck had run out.

Gut wound. A bad one. He was losing feeling in his legs.

Alien slime rained over him—burned as it entered his spacesuit and bloodstream, promising something far worse than death.

He stumbled, dumped Sahar into the airlock beside the waiting cat, then rolled back out just as Liberty dived in. He hit the airlock's auto-purge, slamming the internal hatch shut, opening the external one to his docked ship—effectively locking the door behind him.

"Janus!" Liberty, her tone horror and fury. "Unlock the door—now!"

He slumped, her curses ringing in his ears, her fists battering the airlock's window. He rested his head against the door, didn't look back, grateful she'd never loved him. "Look after my dog, beauti—"

An avalanche of slime engulfed him. Then pain, acid burning his every cell. Panic rose as alien ooze bubbled up inside his helmet, filled his mouth—

Blinding light—not heaven's gates.

Vertigo. A sense of falling sideways.

Something slammed into—under—his back.

"Janus!" A distant voice. The sound of an unsealing hatch. "William!" Liberty calling his real name, because, of course, she'd have investigated him, found all his dirt.

He coughed up slime, pain receding to whirling, numbing peace. He wouldn't die alone, unnamed, in a gutter as expected. How nice.

A jolt—someone removing his helmet.

Blue eyes above him. Liberty, also with no helmet.

He started to protest—

A small rat-faced dog shoved its wet nose in his ear. Lai.

They were on the Betsy, not the Adiona. "What the—?"

"You teleported onto the bridge." Liberty grabbed a med scanner. "Stay still while I check you."

He'd what? Janus' mind spun as Lai licked his face and Liberty ran scans. Teleported? Right. Sure... Why not? Hadn't Kiran's alien friend considered the fungus transportation?

Shit. Amusement on the dark side of hysteria gripped Janus' gut—bringing absolutely no pain.

He looked down.

A hole in his armor. But not his flesh.

Reality reeled. He flopped his head back; found Glow Bug staring down at him with happy bioluminescent eyes. He gave up trying to make sense of anything. Why shouldn't his wound be gone? He'd been infected by a tissue-regenerating, space-time–warping extra-terrestrial mushroom.

Just another frickin' Tuesday.

"You're fine." Sudden battering fists against his armor—then hot, angry, desperate lips against his.

He lay under the assault, hands hovering indecisively, fresh disbelief wiping his already rattled mind. Space cannibals, fungus zombies, transdimensional slime... That's what it took to impress Liberty McQueen?

Alright. Noted.

He rolled Liberty beneath him; made the most of the day's insanity.

The woman was just going to love a typical Wednesday in the Outers.