"And now you're late and must humble yourself a second time, dear Harriet."

"Again, ma'am, I'm sorry."

"And was it a source of excitement?"

"The thrashing, ma'am?"

"The thrashing, Harriet. Later you will reveal your stripes to me, and promise to tell me all the lewd specifics, but for now you may generalize."

"Actually it hurt like hell, ma'am. My delicate cheeks still throb."

"You really can't complain, my dear, after all the thrashings you've administered in your time. Don't forget. I have more than once been a witness." The Queen smiled as Barton and Flashman studiously avoided each others eyes, and the Red Jeddak permitted himself an expression of knowing satisfaction. "Did Miss Coote lay on the flogging herself? I understand she had a subtle technique."

Before Marwood could reply, Morlock huffed and began to protest. "You Majesty…"

"Shut up, Bolivar. How many times do I have to tell you?"

Suddenly the tower shuddered and a light dusting of plaster dropped from the ceiling of the throne room. Slide assumed a seismic occurrence. "Marsquake?"

Lupo moved beside him and spoke in a

low voice. "The Slimy Things are firing their planet guns again."

"What?"

"They're firing their interplanetary cylinders. Probably at Venus."

"Damn." Slide wondered if might just be simpler to get the fuck out of there.

The Gantenbrink matter and the sub-atomic foam didn't seem so bad when compared to an enemy with guns that could throw an payload from one planet to another, but, for the moment, he decided he would stay with the situation and see what it might have to offer. The Turquoise tower shook a second time. Then a third. The Queen rose unsteadily to her feet and glared angrily at nothing in particular, and even, for a moment, dropped the royal "we". "I hate those damned things."

The courtiers exchanged concerned glances. Slide speculated, having seen the quantity of IV tetradetoxin she was taking, if the Queen was prone to psychotic episodes, and if this might the start of one. "We hate them."

Somewhere over the horizon, another planet gun was fired. Queen Mina pulled the jeweled, Gustav Klimt robe tight around her shoulders. "We can't stay and listen to them."

The Queen staggered away from the throne, throwing the courtiers into confusion. Captain Flashman moved to assist her, but she waved him away. "Leave us. This audience is at an end. It is postponed. We cannot listen to their guns. Soon they will be coming for us."

Her guards massed around her, and swaying but determined, she turned towards an arched doorway to the right of the throne. "Slide will come with us. The rest of you will wait in attendance. We will resume this later."

None of courtiers said anything, but they exchanged worried looks. Sir Richard Barton appeared particularly exasperated by the sudden turn of events. Another explosive rumble shook the palace, and Slide stared round look for some hint as to what he was supposed to do. Flashman supplied more that a hint. "You better go with her, old boy. She doesn't like to be kept waiting, especially when she's threatening to have one of her turns."

As Slide moved to go after the Queen, he caught Lupo's eye. The vampire allowed the slightest questioning shrug that clearly said "Humans? What the fuck can you expect?"

Slide returned the silent comment with a nod, and then followed Queen Mina and her guards through the arch, and down what turned out to be a long and dark corridor.

Story so far: Yancey Slide, Idimmu Demon of the Tenth Continuum leaves fractal butterfly trails of fragmenting backstory as he flees what may or may not be inter-dimensional justice. Arriving on ancient Mars via Doc Zen's Carter Machine, he finds himself in the perverse company of neo-Imperial Victorians who have established a faux-British Raj on the Red Planet. At the palace of Queen Mina, the ruler of Extrosylvania, he is granted an intimate, if hallucinatory, one-on-one audience with the Queen.

An attenuated wisp of heavy, silver-white vapor, dusted with a slight shiver of hoar frost like crystalized stars, flowed from between the Queen's pale and slightly lips, over her chin, out across her throat, and down to her breasts. She sighed contentedly and small hesitant ripples disturbed the vapor. Then, moments later, something occurred that was extremely strange, even in Slide's mightily extensive experience. Her body appeared to dissolve, progressively consumed by the bright breath, ivory skin and emaciated flesh passively succumbing to the flow until she was no more that a tenuous mist herself, only approximately holding a temporary, moment to moment, human form. Slide could only speculate that Queen Mina was taking considerably more than just tetradetoxin if she could shimmer in and out of physical reality with such consummate ease, but while he still entertained that thought, the monarch's metamorphing took a turn for the even more strange. A new body started to form, made from what primarily resembled flawed organic Lucite, transparent but sinuous, with internal ripples of tension clearly visible, undulating with a languid chemical hedonism, that not only seduced a response from Slide's physical body, but even coaxed a certain wistful frisson from the inner entity. The body of the Queen had lain normal but motionless when Slide had first been ushered into the inner sanctum, formal as a prone corpse on a white ovoid at the focal point of one of the most elaborate beds Slide had ever seen. The ovoid was covered with the luxurious albino pelt of the rare horned apt that roamed the planet's northern polar cap, and contained between the slightly out-turned wings of a huge sculpted and transparent swan, the real dysfunctional magnificent. Like a stabilized ice sculpture, the rearing neck and head arched well above Slide's not inconsiderable stature, and, as the Queen had commenced her vapor-change, she and the bed had started to look as if they were both composed of the same material, although, in the case of the swan, the internal structure was frozen and still, while the Queen's was in constant motion.

Slide observed all from a dark shadow-throne, beyond the bed's immediate internal light. The handmaiden's final instruction, before showing him in from where he had waiting in the anteroom on the Queen's pleasure, had been. "You will seat yourself in the low-throne, and do not speak until Her Majesty speaks to you."

"Check." Slide was well aware that monarchies were held together by nets of fine-mesh protocol. "How will I know if I've got the right throne?"

"It's the only one. It is exactly positioned for you to gaze adoringly on Her Majesty."

Slide nodded. "No problem."

"Above all, don't look directly at her until you are seated."

"Whatever she wants."

He sat in a shadow-throne, all but invisible, but he drank cognac straight from the bottle, like a cheap-saloon cowboy, and took alternate pulls on a Martian lotus pipe. The bottle and pipe that had been waiting for him were the only sign that Slide's presence was anticipated. The inner chamber was lacquered black, and Japanese scarlet, with a deep gloss, mirror finish, and rigid geometry, sabotaged by claustrophobic falls of purple chiffon like enfolding fabric shadows. Slide sensed a bunker mentality, or maybe a vault 'n' coffin hangover from the time that the Queen had melded with Vlad Dracula, in that Victorian peak of the famous Count's four-hundred-year Transylvanian period. The Queen's body had commenced to move shortly after Slide had seated himself and taken his first drink. Slowly but with an inherent incitement, one long slim leg eased against the other, and her pelvis rotating slightly in the process. Slide was happy to remain passive and watch the slowly escalating royal auto-voluptuousness, until he was suddenly and dazzlingly distracted. Illuminated characters of light appeared in thin air, hotly pink in the red and the black dark of the chamber.