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‘Where are we?’
‘Still in the Nebraska sector.’
‘Oh. Are we there yet?’
Guilliman and the Lion gave Sanguinius an odd look, perplexed why that simple statement of fact might have been ambiguous. Sanguinius sighed about annoyingly literal and starchy people. ‘Never mind.’
*
‘I spy something beginning with “C”.’
‘Corn,’ said the Lion without looking up from his sudoku.
‘“S”.’
‘Space corn,’ said Guilliman without looking up from his crossword.
‘“D”.’
‘Dirt.’
‘“T”.’
‘Tractor.’
‘“B”.’
‘Black void.’
‘Bird.’
‘Blinking light on a clouded mountain.’
‘Uh, it was bird,’ Sanguinius lied as he realised the oceans of blood he’d seen out of the corner of his eye had probably been a hallucination.
Curze spoke up for once. ‘Did you look in a mirror?’
Ignoring his sarcasm, Sanguinius temporalised, ‘I think it was a vulture or something. With two heads.’
*
‘Can we eat somewhere other than Cracker Barrel?’
‘No.’
‘I suppose it fits how incredibly boring you are as a person.’
Guilliman refused to rise to Curze’s bait. ‘I’m going down the menu to try different things and you could too.’
‘I already know I hate all of it.’
The Lion waved a hand around. ‘You’re missing the basic point. What else is there? There is nothing. Do you want to pull over and steal some raw corn? I already got you some jerky at the last space truckstop we passed for you to gnaw on.’
*
‘That sure is…’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why would someone do that?’
‘I suppose there was nothing else to do.’
They all watched as the galaxy’s largest rubber band ball collapsed further into a neutron star under its own weight.
After a suitably dramatic amount of time, the Lion said, ‘We can go now.’
‘Once we’ve filled up the gas tank and used the bathroom,’ said Guilliman responsibly.
*
‘It’s not ideal, but this strip club is the only place to stop for directions. Lion?’
‘No.’
‘It’s not like there’s an alarm over the door that can tell that you’re gay.’
‘I’m not gay,’ snapped the Lion. Everyone ignored him.
‘Roboute? You can ask for directions, right?’
‘My mom said I’m not allowed to go inside a strip club.’
They all considered for a moment, then gave up on persuading him otherwise.
‘I can go.’
‘And we can all agree Konrad can’t be trusted not to eat the strippers. I suppose it comes down to me.’
Sanguinius emerged fifteen minutes later, shirtless and covered in lipstick. ‘Okay, it turns out that after the Warp junction the route labelled north turns to the galactic west, while the south fork loops southeast, so we want the N.’
‘Someone sure wanted the D,’ Curze was contractually obligated to point out when everyone else avoided saying anything.
‘That’s not even a cardinal direction,’ Guilliman said.
*
‘So where are y’all goin’ to?’ asked a waitress at a Cracker Barrel in the Oklahoma sector.
Sanguinius looked around at his brothers. The Lion would refuse to answer. Guilliman would give a needlessly complicated and complete answer for the sake of accuracy. Curze would tell the waitress when her children were going to die. ‘We’re on our way to visit our father out west.’
‘I hope it’s not a bad occasion.’
‘One of our brothers is dying, but he’s had it coming for awhile now.’
‘Is that so? My condolences anyway.’
Curze probably rolled his eyes, but with his pupils as they were no one could tell. Guilliman and the Lion swiftly ordered more coffee before anyone offered an opinion of which of their brothers was going to die, just that at least one of them clearly was.
*
‘I thought we had done a pretty fair job of stamping out religion,’ commented the Lion.
‘Apparently not.’ Guilliman sounded only resigned, having gotten over any assumptions he may have had about the subject back at Calth.
Staring up at the 150 AU tall cross, the Lion wondered, ‘What religion is this even?’ The next planet over had obviously seen their neighbor’s construction, gotten jealous, and built a slightly larger one.
Sanguinius shrugged. ‘According to the space billboards we’ve passed, they’re very opposed to abortion. This is the main tenet that I’ve gotten. Oh, and they have a lot of votive icons that look like me.’
*
‘Space is awfully green out here.’
‘Remind you of home?’ Guilliman asked, and the Lion glared. This was totally different from tree green.
The nebula crackled with clashes of newborn stars sparking like lightning, booms like thunder, and hails of icy comets like hail.
‘Should we be going through this?’ the Lion asked tentatively. ‘Maybe we should go around?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ Sanguinius said, ‘I’m from a desert.’
With a low roar far louder and more constant than the thunder, a tornado vortex began to drop from the dark clouds of space dust. It spat out a Furious Abyss-class spaceship, which for some reason had eighteen large wheels growing from its underside.
Everyone turned to look at Guilliman. ‘Yes, I have read the National Weather Service advisory of what we should do. Which is pull over, preferably in a ditch and not under an overpass, then seek a permanent structure if possible. I think that Cracker Barrel over there might have a storm shelter or storage basement, deep into the core of the planet. Then we wait for it to go away.’
*
‘I knew we should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque.’
‘Lion, don’t you have a GPS?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can we use it?’ Guilliman prompted.
‘No.’
‘Does Sanguinius need to stop and ask for directions again?’
‘No, there’s a sign. “20,000 light years to Terra”.’
‘That seems suspicious,’ said the Lion immediately.
‘Is there anything else between here and Terra that might be worth putting on a sign?’
‘Okay, you have a point.’
*
‘What is that horrible, daemonic screeching over the vox? Shut it off or I swear to science I’m going to turn this spaceship around and go back to Caliban.’
‘It’s AM radio trying to get a signal from a more distant station,’ Guilliman explained to the Lion. ‘I was hoping to pick up the rest of the NPR Morning Edition, but let me adjust the dial and see if I can find a better signal for the next few light years.’
After a few clicks, the static resolved into the chorus of ‘Sweet Home Alabama.’
*
The Lion suddenly pulled over.
‘Are we stopping here? Why?’ asked Guilliman.
‘Because.’
Sanguinius translated for their unforthcoming brother. ‘It’s not a Cracker Barrel.’
The Lion refused to say the words ‘Rooty Tooty Fresh 'N Fruity’ out loud, so he pointed with a thick finger at a picture on the menu and grunted. This was the standard way of ordering off the IHOP breakfast menu at 3 a.m., so the waitress took his order without complaint.
She turned to Curze, ‘What do you want?’
‘I would like the bones of my enemies jutting through their tender flesh while they stare at their own glistening, perforated entrails and scream.’
‘He wants the chocolate chip pancakes,’ Guilliman translated, ‘and an orange juice.’
‘No I don’t.’
‘You don’t need more caffeine and you do need vitamins. You’re getting the orange juice.’
The Lion pulled his own black coffee as far away from Curze as he could before he stole it. Curze hissed in satisfaction, having already preempted that. Sanguinius ordered the Lion another coffee.
*
*
‘“C”.’
‘Cactus,’ said Guilliman, balancing a thriller novel he’d got at the last void station they’d stopped at against his knee so he could make notes in the margins complaining about plot holes. ‘Space saguaros, I believe.’
‘“R”.’
‘Rock,’ said the Lion, hiding his book within his sudoku booklet, but from the glimpse Sanguinius had gotten of the cover earlier was a novel titled My Gay Werewolf Pirate Lover.
‘“V”.’
‘Vast and empty nothingness that speaks to the meaninglessness of all life and its eventual decline into dust and less than dust,’ said Curze, moving the jerky he’d been chewing on sufficiently to one side of his mouth to speak.
‘No, it was vulture, but good guess.’
*
‘Are we there yet?’