Septimity and The Blood Brotherhood: The Third Hilarious Glothic Tale (The Glothic Tales Book 3)
Authors: Derek Haines
Septimity and The Blood Brotherhood
The Third Hilarious Glothic Tale
by Derek Haines
Septimity and The Blood Brotherhood
Copyright © 2012 by Derek Haines
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Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
The Glothic Tales
The four Glothic Tales are stand-alone stories, so don’t panic if you mess up your arithmetic and read them in the wrong order, as all sense of time or logical sequence has been meticulously warped – for your reading convenience.
Septimity and The Blood Brotherhood
March – A Tale of Salmon and Swedes
‘…..it has been said by others that time has been known to travel through people – from time to time.’
Septimity and The Blood Brotherhood
Once Upon A Long Time Ago
For those stuck in one place, country or planet, there are small complexities such as time zones, which are pretty easy to calculate if you can divide everywhere you are stuck upon into little chunks of distance and time. However one strange little planet dreamt up a very weird time concept they called daylight saving. For some reason, the planet Erde decided it could take away a unit of night time and add it to day time and give everyone extra long warm evenings to enjoy. There was a lot of arguing about the practicalities of this innovation and while most accepted the change, even given the fact of knowing it was a whole pile of hogwash, other more sensitive Erdeans were particularly concerned about the fact that their curtains were fading, their children were getting sunburnt and their dairy cows were getting awfully confused.
In other places however, there were much more important time issues to consider. When one runs twelve entire sun systems, time control can be a nightmare. With tricky time factors such as warping, twisting, wormholes, black holes, elliptical orbits and light years, regulating time needed extra specialist attention. Oddly enough it was an Erdean who solved the issue for the Glothic Empire – the empire in charge of the aforementioned Twelve Sun Systems. As time equals money in most civilisations, controlling it is an absolute economic imperative.
Pope Gregory the Thirteenth, a churchy sort of fellow from the planet Erde, or December the Tenth, Supreme Potentate of the Twelve Sun Systems of Gloth as he became known later in life, took it upon himself to solve the time problem once and for all. He simply applied his very own Gregorian calendar to the entire Twelve Sun Systems and that was the end of the argument. People with some inside knowledge knew that it was in fact a gentleman named Christopher Clavius who had really done all the hard work on developing this calendar and time concept, but Gregory took it as his own. Although a brilliantly simple solution, the use of the Gregorian calendar complete with its twenty-four hour days, seven day weeks, irregular months and of course the odd leap year thrown in for a little extra confusion, did cause a few problems in certain sun systems and particularly on a number of outer planets and moons. Namely that the periods of light and dark that usually defined a day, got all mixed up after applying the rather inapt twenty-four hour day and led to a lot of concern about fading of curtains, burnt children and very confused nasty nocturnal creatures. On some planets the incoherent new calendar had the bizarre effect of extending people’s lives by such an inordinate amount of time that cemeteries were lying idle and undertakers being sent bankrupt due to the fact that people stopped dying at an appropriate age and went on to live for literally thousands of years – or more.
Although some of these unforeseen side effects were brought to Gregory’s attention, he decided in his infinite wisdom to ignore them completely as he was in charge of everything and it was his calendar – end of discussion. As his lineage would become the Gregorian Royal Family of Gloth and rule for millions of years, there was little anyone could do about it. With that said, there were those who tried continually to return the Twelve Sun Systems back to a more local and logical time management system, but they were few and scattered around various planets, moons and habitable asteroids. They were to become however, a small thorn in the side of Gloth and especially the Gregorian Royal Family.
When Pope Gregory became December the Tenth, Supreme Potentate of the Twelve Sun Systems of Gloth and the first ever non-Glothic ruler of Gloth, he abolished the time-honoured process of electing the Supreme Potentate from either the aristocracy or High Council and instead installed a hereditary system. This really annoyed a lot of aristocrats and councillors who were now cast out from the palace. The most annoyed was September, the eldest son of December the Ninth. He was a shoo-in to have been elected if his father hadn’t been silly enough to support Pope Gregory as the new Supreme Potentate, and September really got upset about the whole episode. He became so much of a nuisance in fact that Pope Gregory had him shipped off to a remote little planet called Terranova Two and he was never seen or heard of again. Well, for a very, very long time anyway.
It must be said that September wasn’t just annoyed about not getting the number one job. He was upset about the time change idea too, but what really stuck in his throat was that Gloth was now ruled by a family of Erdean mongrels. Descendants of the Glothic HUMAN (Hybridised Uniform Manipulation And Naturalisation) and GOD (Glothic Oversight Detachment) programs on Erde, they all carried the genetic code of monkeys, apes and a number of other banana-eating ancestors.
With extremely limited resources, September set about a plan to eradicate this Erdean monkey gene from Gloth and restore the rightful rule of pure Glothians. With an overwhelming belief and the courage to overcome many obstacles and difficulties, September managed to contact a few other Glothic aristocratic dissidents and exiles and together they formed The Blood Brotherhood of Gloth, whose charter was loosely based around the eradication of the aforementioned monkey gene from the face of Gloth – and its Twelve Sun Systems as well.
September’s grandson, Septimity Fish-Roe got things moving in a big way when he set up his command post on a remote, ugly moon called Titania. A little, dead and very black moon used singularly for smelting plitzominium, a semi-useful industrial mineral. Orbiting Yooranus it was however strategically located as Septimity was able to communicate with a number of nearby sun systems. Even though it was an extremely unattractive place, it became the lonely home to Septimity for a very long time. So isolated and for so long in fact that Septimity cloned himself regularly; every thousand years or so. He believed that this helped in keeping himself fresh and alert. And alive.
While having to live underground, as the surface of the planet was deadly poisonous as a result of the eons of plitzominium ore smelting, he lived a comfortable life; except for one extended period of time when he, quite by accident, took in a stray Erdean as a boarder.
At six foot six and as clumsy as an ox, plus having a nervous and allergic affliction that caused him constant sneezing attacks, Hal Hoop was a long term distraction for Septimity. Luckily, Sep as he was better known to the very few people who knew him, found a radical solution and managed to get Hal back to Erde – and at the same time, fulfil his Blood Brotherhood commitments and prevent Hal’s Erdean genes from spreading anywhere near Gloth. Sep’s plan went very well, and Hal was successfully shot back to Erde. However, Sep would never get to know that his plan resulted in Hal accidentally hitting a CTC, which is short for a closed timelike curve, so Hal’s arrival was a little earlier that it should probably have been. Only by a few months though it must be said. Had Sep been told about this small miscalculation of his, he would have explained it away with a wave of his hand. ‘What nonsense! People can’t travel though time.’
While this is probably correct, it has been said by others that time has been known to travel through people – from time to time.
In any event it was quite an achievement because up until the successful return of Hal to Erde, which was the first time a stray Erdean had ever been safely repatriated, Sep had been arranging the transport of stray Erdeans to Lacertilian, a planet with a pleasant reptilian gene based population that was sympathetic to the cause of the Blood Brotherhood due to the advent of underlying Glothic reptilian racism towards them since the Gregorian Royal Family came to power.
Although descended from lizards, Lacertilians did not look like goannas or crocodiles. Apart from their attractive light green complexion and forked red tongues that continually licked at their thin lips, they were perfectly normal. It must be pointed out though that they had claws instead of fingernails, but this usually went unnoticed by anyone as there were specialist Lacertilian manicurists throughout the Twelve Sun Systems who plied their trade in making their claws look awfully similar to rugged fingernails.
In consultation with his contacts on Lacertilian, Sep agreed to try and repatriate more Erdeans back to Erde when the time was right. However, as Sep’s cunning plan involved securing a Hoog battle class destroyer from under the noses of Glothic High Command and using the Hoog’s escape module to shoot Erdeans back home, these right times were very few and far between. So few and so far between that it had only happened once. Therefore he started working on a new plan. Very unsuccessfully. It would take an awfully long time for one of Sep’s distant future clones to stumble on a better solution.
When September, number one son and heir to December the Ninth, received his transportation orders to Terranova Two, he was understandably a bit annoyed. As he had fully expected to be elected Supreme Potentate after his father’s death and rule over twelve entire sun systems, it was a very sudden shock to be exiled to a distant, small and altogether unpleasant dusty little olive-grey planet at the very end of Sun System One. As a validated Glothic execution warrant existed for September on every planet, moon and habitable asteroid in the entire Twelve Sun Systems, apart from Terranova Two, he understood that he was stuck there – permanently.
The only saving grace for poor unfortunate September was that he didn’t have to work in the plitzominium mines as he decided to accept his fate, make the best of it, and open a guesthouse in TerraTunTun. Situated ideally just a short distance from the only landing field on Terranova Two, TerraTunTun lacked a few homely comforts for the very rare visitors who arrived. September knew his new venture was not going to be a money-spinner, but apart from working in the mines, the only other job going was assisting in painting yellow lines on the landing field, so he decided on independent employment.
The only other inhabitants of TerraTunTun were the two employees who worked at the landing field. Nyumerus Sniddleydrip, who was the landing field manager and his assistant Hohumm Sajacitti, who painted the yellow lines on the landing field, which made it quite a small village. Every now and then though, lonely and depressed plitzominium mine workers would travel from afar to get paralytically drunk in TerraTunTun. It did disturb the peace and tranquillity a little, but it was good business for September. On extremely rare occasions mining shuttle pilots would stay overnight, but they usually only did it once, as September never quite mastered the art of digestible food preparation. Then again, on Terranova Two, digestible ingredients were hard to come by with the main staple ingredient being Bezzbuzz, an extra large subterranean rodent.
One astonishing discovery for September was that as he was now living permanently on Terranova Two, his life expectancy has shot up from about one hundred and fifty to a very big number indeed. Nobody knew why, but death was a rare event on his little planet – unless you were fortunate enough to be crushed to death in a mine accident. No one could remember how old they were, and September was amazed by Nyumerus Sniddleydrip recounting hundreds of stories from many centuries past. It was with this realisation that September decided he had the time to seek his revenge. To rid Gloth of the Erdean influence that had resulted in his deportation.
*****
It took a very long time, but with the cooperation of a number of friendly mining shuttle pilots, September managed to make contact with a small handful of his similarly aggrieved Glothic aristocrats, who had also been deported to isolated planets, moons and asteroids and had become the founding members of the Blood Brotherhood.
These same pilots also assisted September with an unlikely project that he began working on. Over what was probably centuries, September painstakingly collected an array of components that he needed; piece by little piece in very small consignments smuggled aboard mining shuttles. When the very last piece arrived, he was ready to start his ambitious project. To establish and man seven strategic communication bases for The Blood Brotherhood. He called his new machine Septimity, which he installed in the kitchen of his guesthouse, and it would allow him to create the seven clones of himself he needed for his plan – his grandchildren as he would come to call them. As an aside, September cloned his clever cloning machine as well, which was a very cunning move on his part, as his clones could happily clone themselves and keep up their good work forever and ever.
His first success came with the creation of Septimity Fish-Roe. September struggled with a name for his new creation for some time, but decided that seeing he had managed to create his first clone by using a smuggled sack of fish eggs from Lamella Six as the starter and his machine had done the rest with the addition of his own fingernail clippings, the name was apt. Once all seven clones had been created and sent on their way to remote parts of the Twelve Sun Systems, September relaxed, retired and went back to cooking indigestible meals for his all too infrequent lodgers. His work for the Blood Brotherhood now in the trustworthy hands of himself – seven times removed.