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Synopsis

Lies, betrayal, and deception are all in play in this treacherous game of history, and here are the players:

Countess Krak: victim of a spectacular alien abduction, she's bound for a distant dungeon where she faces a venomous fate. She may be looking death in the face.

Royal Officer Jettero Heller: convinced that the Countess, his love, is dead, he's holed up in a Connecticut roadhouse, standing square in an assassin's crosshairs.

And don't forget Soltan Gris: on the run with a sex-crazed young temptress named Teenie Whopper, he undertakes a drug-fueled voyage across the Atlantic on the multibillion-dollar yacht bought with a credit card.

So who is in command? And is there any hope for planet Earth? The answers lie at the end of a rocking Voyage of Vengeance.

Excerpt

PART FIFTY-TWO

To My Lord Turn, Justiciary of the Royal Courts and Prison, Government City, Planet Voltar, Voltar Confederacy

Your Lordship, Sir!

I, Soltan Gris, Grade Eleven General Services Officer, former Secondary Executive of the Coordinated Information Apparatus, Voltar Confederacy (All Hail His Royal Majesty Cling the Lofty and the Lords of His Empire), am with all humility providing the seventh part of my confession.

It is at this point that I must detail the most heinous of all the crimes I committed while on MISSION EARTH.

Officially, I don't suppose there is a penalty for arranging the murder of a nonperson, such as the Countess Krak, or for witnessing the deaths of the scores of Earthlings who died that fatal day of my revenge. And while I have not looked in the Royal Codes for the penalty for arranging the murder of a Royal officer, such as Jettero Heller, I'm sure it must be severe.

What is important is that I tell you how it all came about so you can see that your decision to keep me in your fine prison is most warranted.

I was tricked into my polygamous marriage to Adora Pinch and her "wife" Candy. That alone was enough to drive anyone to acts of violence. She even got me to marry her under one of my aliases--the one I used in Turkey, Sultan Bey. But then she had me perform with other lesbians to convert them from their psychiatrically endorsed sexual preference.

What I didn't understand was why this horror was happening to me. It was supposed to happen to Heller, not me!

J. Walter Madison, infamous public relations man, had pulled every trick in the PR book to get front page stories about how "Whiz Kid" Wister (Heller) had polygamously married Maizie Spread, Toots Switch and Dolores Pubiano de Cópula. Madison had used a phony double of Heller/Wister everywhere to get news and had even arranged press photographs depicting Maizie and her swollen belly as the final proof of Heller's immoral sexual behavior.

Why would this recoil on me?

I even had the law firm of Dingaling, Chase and Ambo pursuing Heller with false lawsuits and arrest warrants to get Heller and Krak locked away in Bellevue Hospital--and what happened? Adora Pinch tricked me into marrying her and Candy and then I ended up being threatened with polygamy! That's not fair!

Why did it happen to me?

From the sound, sane, scientific pronouncements made by sound, sane, scientific authorities (especially the ones with doctors' degrees), I knew that there couldn't be any relationship between what was happening to me and what I was doing to Heller. Of course not. That's a ridiculous idea.

No, the bad things that happened to me were caused by Fate. Or by Heller. I definitely didn't cause any of it! Everyone knows that man is just mud. They teach that in all the schools on planet Earth and you either agree to it or you flunk the course.

So everyone knows that man's just a bunch of stupid chemicals. He can't cause anything. Man has no conscience, no morality, no worth and no meaning except what authority dictates.

Besides, what would happen if a person began to think he was responsible for his own condition?

What would happen if a person believed (even for a moment) that he wasn't just a bunch of chemicals?

Why, the next thing you know, people would be causing things! They wouldn't ask psychiatrists for opinions anymore! They'd believe they could make up their own minds! Authorities would be taken off government welfare and they'd have to get jobs just like everyone else! People wouldn't read Madison's newspapers anymore!

They'd see that it's all been a giant scam!

My Gods, that's dangerous!

Declare them insane! Stamp them out! Crush them!Kill them! Kill them all! KILL! KILL!! KILL!!!

Whew! There.

I feel better.

Where was I?

Oh, yes, I remember. I was telling you how sane I am because I know from psychiatric authorities that I am just a bunch of chemicals and that I am not responsible for anything bad that happens to me.

After all, it was Adora Pinch Bey who brought the lesbians in for me to convert with my sexual performances.

I remember one more clearly than all the rest--Teenie Whopper, that fifteen-year-old, bubble-gum-chewing devil with her supply of Neo Punk Rock records and drugs. Always wanting pictures taken. Always offering me one drug after another. "Here, Inky, take a puff of this," she'd say. What was I supposed to do?

She even got me to give her five thousand dollars so she could take lessons from some Hong Kong whore. I was willing to pay anything to get her out of my life.

After all, my purpose was to destroy Krak and Heller so Rockecenter's drugs would flow back to Voltar so Lombar Hisst could overthrow the Empire so he could slaughter all the riffraff. That's sane, right?

I just had to work out a way to do it.

Thanks to the audio-optical bugs I had had implanted in Heller's and Krak's skulls, I knew everything they saw and heard. It was not easy when I watched Krak buy the yacht Golden Sunset on my Squeeza credit card. She sailed it out into the Atlantic somewhere and then left Heller on it as a virtual prisoner, alone except for Captain Bitts and his crew.

And what did Krak do? Did she do something harmless like teaching that Mr. Calico cat of hers some new trick? No! I watched her in my viewer as she set out on the trail of those three poor, innocent girls, Maizie Spread, Toots Switch and Dolores Pubiano de Cópula. Using her stage skills, Krak disguised herself and managed to get the address of their apartment, and then she was off to kill them! Oh, what a fiend! All those poor girls had done was lie to the courts and then to the press, who printed the story about Heller in such a way that nationally enquiring minds would believe it. What's wrong with that?

When I saw that Krak was on their trail, I quickly notified the law offices of Dingaling, Chase and Ambo so the shabby man in the shabby coat could serve the papers and get her locked away. Ambo put the armed Eagle Eye Security guards on the alert with orders to shoot her on sight, for there was a fifty-thousand-dollar reward on Krak's head--dead or alive.

I thought I could relax because I also had one other trump card: Dr. Phetus P. Crobe.

As a cellologist, Crobe had the skills to create any conceivable monstrosity, any mixture of man and beast, and back on Voltar he had drooled at the thought of manipulating Heller's cellular structure.

And Crobe had acquired one other talent since his arrival on Earth: he had absorbed the best of psychiatric theory and was now held in high esteem at Bellevue. Since he was also equipped with optical and audio bugs, I was able to monitor his progress as the very model of the man-is-mud authority.

But it was Krak that I was really worried about. I pulled her viewer closer to figure out where she was.

All I needed was her location and she was dead!

Copyright © 1987 by L. Ron Hubbard

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