81. Jimi & the Galactic Empire

This is how war begins. Killa rides back to the band. They’re at a private airstrip awaiting him for takeoff. When he arrived the atmosphere was visibly cold. But not unfriendly. In the plane with nothing else going at close proximity, the band is sure to iron things out. Strategies Pepe Gilgamesh accrued over decades.

The music mogul is no longer the same one ten years ago. The reason being he’s no longer a music mogul; nowadays he is just a mogul, having his hands dipped in varied industries with voluptuous success, his Lucipher chip making headlines ahead in research advancement to Elon Musk’s Neuralink.

Technically, it would be a waste of a technocrat’s time to manage rock stars, but Pepe Gilgamesh loves Zero. He enjoys hanging out with them. But for now he just allows the silence to simmer. They are one hour out in flight, returning to Suzie’s continent. Drinks are available, but there are no hot girls. Vince and Yvper still have a voracious appetite, but Turbo whose (necro)hunger was never that great to begin with (though enormous by human standards) has returned after his resurrection more morbid and serious, and easily agitated. And of course Killa’s married – the least of rock stars, this oxymoron lead singer.

The band’s image has also mellowed. They spot shorter hair now and they’re a tad less outrageous in costumes. But their live performances are always a banger, totally out there in the kaleidoscopic scale.

Just as the environment appears to warm up, the jet hits turbulence. It was no ordinary air pocket. They flew into the propulsion field generated by a scarab-like biological hybrid spaceship. This means they were caught in a magnetic flux. The needles spun and the pilots fought hard to regain control. Even as they did, they broke free from the scarab’s impetus drive but the impact caused one of the engines to heat up and explode.

They were going down.

But literally out of the blue, smaller bug shaped vehicles hovered alongside, and by some stability impulsion, the crashing craft was slowly reduced of its gravitational momentum and mysteriously held in thin air like a giant drone. Had they hit the Atlantic, Pepe and the pilots would have died.

Anyway, Killa and Turbo’s confrontation would have to wait. Shu’ rHall Karon wants to meet.

AI generated art prompted by author

This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to persons and events are coincidental. Use of names of public figures, places and events are purely fictional and are not representative of them.