Chapter Ten

The planet Styx was a bit of an enigma. It was a dark planet, circling a dark star in a dark star system. Everyone knew it was there, but no one actually knew where it was without the help of those who lived there, and the residents of Styx usually pretended that they weren't there.

In some sense they weren't. Styx used to be a normal planet in a normal star system. However, some three thousand years prior, an incident involving a dark matter reactor, a graviball and what was suspected to be a copious amount of alcohol had blown them out of sync with the rest of the universe. Theoretically, they had yet to figure out how to blast the whole thing back into it. Popular opinion suggested they just didn't feel like it, after all, they had figured out how to move their ships back and forth between their part of the universe and everyone elses. Wembly assumed that Styx could move back into normal space whenever they wanted, but they just didn't feel like dealing with the Empire. Not that he blamed them in anyway. That didn't mean that they weren't going to have to deal with him today.

“Alright boys,” announced Wembly, “are you all good and shnockered?”

“Aye, sir,” they all slurred while gesturing at two empty kegs of Siren Summer Ale and a half empty barrel of Dijo whiskey.

“Excellent! This is a galaxy class karaoke machine. It contains two million songs from all across the universe. And these are sonic tennis balls, they multiply every time you sing off key. Have fun turning the Wingnut into a ball pit.”

“Enjoy,” said Wembly while putting in ear plugs and cranking the volume all the way up.

After a few moments of some song Wembly couldn't even begin to identify, tennis balls covered the entire deck and were beginning to role off the sides of the ship. He also noticed that the cylonicals were detaching from the hull and trying to float away. He smiled, they disliked Bad Vibrations.

Some twenty minutes and the beginnings of a serious headache later, the sonic tennis balls had filled up the entire lower sheild below the dirigible and his crew was taking turns jumping into it. The music, had also gotten worse. Suddenly, Wembly heard a howling.

“Well that took long enough,” said Wembly to no one in particular.

“This is the Styx cruiser Shibu Inu, please turn off the noise, you are being boarded.”