Chapter 2 The Good, the Bad and the Really Bad

Tamarax Station. Possibly the worst place in the universe. The demon herself; Lady Tamarax Deloro ran the place. She's wasn't really a 'lady' anymore. She was just a monster.

She was good until she looked right at a tear in the space time continuum. Since then she was never the same. Apparently she saw a future where Mel (founder and leader of the USM) killed her so she lost it and would stop at nothing to kill the woman.

The station was based on a humungous rocky planet labelled uninhabitable, but she chose to ignore that obvious fact. At least three people in her station died a week due to the horrid conditions while three more died by her own hand. Nobody dared to ask for better living conditions because otherwise she could introduce them all to her little friend who had the real power.

Lady Tamarax used to be a beautiful woman (well, in an alien way) but her skin had become grey and rotten. She was skinnier than a skeleton with sags of old muscle under her arms and around her stomach when she wasn't wearing a corset. Her long black hair looked like millions of untamed vines. Light could not escape her cold, black eyes and her nails had grown into eight seven inch black blades (she only had three fingers on each hand). Heck, she hadn't used a knife to cut up her meal in years!

Looking into the space time continuum had really changed her. Anybody who looked into the tear saw the true meaning of time and it frustrated them because it was impossible to explain what you saw no matter what language you spoke. Tamarax tried to explain how time overlapped and could change but everything that changed was supposed to be changed and nothing was spontaneous with time. Everything that should happen would happen whether people wanted it to or not. Just travelling back through time could make the event you tried to prevent happen which is why the monks of Destin-Hey (often just called 'Hey-monks' as their language never had more than one syllable for each word) wrote the rules of time and made the universal bestseller list with their novel. They knew the rules because their race began just as time did. Although they didn't know what came before the universe, they knew what was to come. They had physic powers and were the only race in Milky Way history to reach telepath level twelve which was higher than the highest level... Seeing as they graded the telepaths of course they were the most powerful.

Tamarax had forgotten about the laws the Destin-Hey monks had created because she intended to break them. She didn't consider the fact that by trying to break the laws she wasn't breaking them at all and was following the set path, yet she was sure she had found the friend who was going to change all that. She had captured a 4th dimensional creature that called itself Tak because its actual name would take a millennium to say. Nobody was actually sure what the creature looked like, but judging by its shrieks it was terrifying. Tak was the only known creature that existed out of time and space. It had the power to manipulate the space time continuum if it got the right 'push'. To get this 'push' it had been hidden in an comet/ship that had a set course for a particular star that would not only give it the right amount of energy, but also the time 'push'. This particular star had a lot of enigmatic time energy surrounding it. It had a connection to Mel who was the only being older than the universe itself. Tamarax had done the math and concluded that crashing the comet into that star would create not only tear a hole in the space time continuum, but also let her use Tak as the remote to control the universe and rearrange it. – Don't worry; this'll all make a whole lot more sense later, but for now just smile and nod, time travel isn't simple okay?

Tamarax's bubble of thought popped when two soldiers the size of rhinos burst through the sky scraping doors. One had a strange blue blood surrounding his knuckles and Tamarax found it easy to conclude that the guy he had hit was not in great shape. – Good.

"Scouts were patrolling this area." He grumbled.

"Excellent." She said slyly. "Did you dispose of the ship?"

"We took what we needed from it and then blew the heck out of it."

"How many were on-board?"

"Just two."

"Damn." She said with the snapping of her sharp nails in disappointment. It was a horrible sound that sounded as if millions of tiny bones were breaking under her touch.

"Well, we can spare some of our own men, Tak's got to eat."

"Yes my lady. I'll run through the library and search for the weakest." The other soldier said before bowing once and leaving her office in haste. – He didn't want her to consider him for the menu.

"You." She said pointing at the one with the bloody knuckles. "Show me where they are."

All the walls in Tamarax Station were lined with one giant equation that the lady herself had written up when she was bored one day. She had never explained it, but it was something to do with the ultimate bomb. She would have created the thing but some of the elements needed had not been discovered and she had just made them up on the spot. – Crazy right? No, she had seen into time itself so she knew those elements would be found. Tamarax found it annoying having to wait around for everybody to discover things that she already knew about, but she couldn't be stuffed to put her money into scientific research when she planned on recreating the universe anyways.

The prisons were just as pleasant as her mind set. Anybody captured was probably not going to live through the day anyways, but their final day was a day in hell. They were like old medieval prisons except filled with the advanced versions of a stretching board that shocks you while you get torn from limb to limb. Tamarax let strange little rodent creatures scurry around in the prison block, most were diseased demons hungry for blood. If the guards didn't wear the proper boots then the creatures would get their legs. In fact, the only thing that separated it from a medieval dungeon was that instead of looking out the window onto a kingdom, you looked out at dead space: The place where a star could not be seen for at least three light years in every direction.

Tamarax Station sat at the very tip of one of the Milky Way's long arms. It seems to be too far from any place like Earth to really be a threat, yet aliens like Tamarax had far older civilizations that have been advancing their technology for much longer.

Unlike on Earth which was the one of the most primitive contributions to the USM, all spaceships authorized by Mel had to be able to travel at two light years per hour with a dega-drive of at least 230, 405 light years per hour. This was just the minimum a spaceship can travel at, but some of the larger ships like the Titonic –the one Cameron was on– could travel to some of the greatest speeds in the universe... Seriously, speed of light was nothing.

Two USM Navy scouts sat weakly on their knees in one of the cells. A Tamarax soldier on each side of them making sure they couldn't escape even if they had the will. The co-pilot usually looked similar to an overgrown butterfly. Sadly, it hard to tell now because her wings and antennas had been ripped off.

The pilot wasn't looking so good himself, his orange skin had gone purple in places and blue blood was dripping off his fangs from where he had been hit. Their grey and black uniforms were tattered and soaked in blood.

"You two are looking lovely." Tamarax joked.

She held the pilot's chin in her fingers and made him look up at her. It was at that point that she realized his eyes had been gouged out and she let his head drop. He was barely conscious like his co-pilot, but it did not matter. She didn't need information from them anyways.

"Mrl... ke...you...r...a..." He mumbled. It took a heck of a lot of strength just to get his vocal chords to work let alone make words.

"I'm sorry I didn't quite catch that. Could you repeat it darling?" Tamarax asked patronizingly as she knelt down beside him and put her pointy ear close to his bleeding lips.

"M-Mel's going t-to kick you're a-ass." He whispered with an evil smile that made more blood run down his chin.

Tamarax usually didn't let little things get to her, but just seeing the amount of faith the USM soldiers had in such a horrible creature like Mel made her mad. She stood up and drew her metal-rimmed boot back before kicking the pilot right in his alien rib-cage. She heard a cracking noise as her boot made contact with his ribs. The pilot went backwards and stopped moving.

She snapped at the guards and they both picked up the prisoners and followed her out the door. The co-pilot was more active now that her best friend was down. She couldn't escape the giant man's hold and she was in too much pain to put much effort in.

The station stretched out for miles in each direction which is why conveyer belts were placed conveniently in most areas. Tamarax hopped on one and grabbed the bar followed by the guards carrying the two USM scouts. They didn't need to grab the bar because they were so heavy and probably weren't going to blow away like scrawny Tamarax would. She actually had to dig her boots into the ground just to keep her balance. Her greasy hair blew wildly in every direction like each individual lock was a snake in Medusa's hair. The skin on her cheeks began to ripple as the wind hit it. She tried to turn head, but hair just attacked her eyes and she gave up.

She leapt off the conveyer and strode down the long corridor followed by the two giant beasts and the fresh meat. The metal doors started to slide open as the cameras detected her coming. The doors revealed the private hangar the size of a warehouse. Right in the centre was a large hole covered only by the thin electric shield. Below it was the giant 'comet' that was just getting ready to take off on its massive adventure to the star Mel grew up around. The engineers who were just doing the finishing touches on the engine outside in space hated to touch the thing because they knew what monster was inside.

Tamarax made the guard drop the pilot before she dragged his limp body right to the edge of the hole. She didn't know why but she wanted make him fear her in those final moments otherwise she would be left unsatisfied.

In the bay there was hatch leading into the 'comet' that stuck through the electric shield so that Tamarax could easily feed Tak without having to go outside of the station. She punched a button on her wrist and the hatch doors slid apart. A strange shrieking sound could be heard from deep within the comet. Its cries were angry and disarming.

The co-pilot began shifting in the guard's arms. A small bridge came out that sat just above the electric shield and went straight to the asteroid entrance. She dragged the pilot to the very edge of it and stayed quiet as the terrifying creature screamed at them from below.

"Hear that darling? Because that will be the last sound you'll ever hear." She hissed in his ear before looking at the blood oozing from where his eyes used to be. How she wished she could make him look her in the eyes. – It was a shame he would miss out on seeing the satisfaction in her face.

"What the hell is that?" The co-pilot screeched as the shrieking seemed to just keep getting louder.

"Calm down Sefras!" The pilot called back, but she just kept struggling.

"You can do whatever the heck you want to me but my co-pilot deserves better than this. Send her back into space, I promise she doesn't know the location of this base." The pilot pleaded quietly.

I failed her, I failed her family, I failed the USM Navy and I failed Mel.

"Oh well aren't you the honourable captain?" Tamarax said haughtily. "Sadly, now that she's heard that noise she's gotta go too. Any other requests?"

"Let me go."

"Wha–"

She then realized he didn't mean 'let me go' as in wanting to be free. He pushed himself out of her weak grip and dove head-first into the asteroid entrance. His last act to annoy her, she always loved to force people in and he just went on his own terms. – What a badass.

Tamarax bit her lip so hard that blood started to run down her chin before she stamped on the bridge like an angry little girl. She wished that she had kept the pilot around a little longer so she could really break him, but he wasn't going to allow that. Despite everything he just died a free man and there was nothing she could do about that.

His co-pilot shrieked sorrowfully. Tamarax stopped her as she dug her nails right into her throat. She knew the genetic makeup of Sefras's species and that it wouldn't kill her although she would have some trouble breathing. Oh well, it wouldn't matter much longer anyways.

"Well your dear captain may have been a bit of a blind rebel, but no such luck for you sweetie." She growled as she dragged the dying creature onto the bridge.

Tamarax made the scout stand up properly so she could push her in when the co-pilot suddenly turned to her and spat her protective acid mucus onto her face. Tamarax covered her face with one hand before kicking the creature into the spaceship below. – She and her captain could rot in hell.

"Ugh, the USM Navy is just full of those kind of people isn't?" She joked as she stepped off the bridge.

One of the guards passed her a small cloth to try and tame the acid on her face. Tamarax pushed right past him and headed for the door. She had sustained so many injuries in her life that her body had grown numb to such melee pain. She already had plenty of scars on her ruined body; one more wasn't going to be a big deal. The witch-like woman grabbed the collar of an engineer walking by and made him look her right in the eyes. He tried not to stare at the acid steaming off of her skin and did not break the eye contact.

"I want the damned ship done soon or you're next on the menu. Got it?"

"Yes ma'am." He said placidly as if her words weren't threatening. – Big mistake.

"Okay... He's next on the menu." She said bluntly and passed him to one of the guards who would take care of him.

The other guard followed her back into the hallway and onto the rickety conveyer belt. She looked more furious than ever as she licked the blood off her chin with her elastic tongue before accidently burning it on the acid.

"Don't worry bucko, " she said to the guard, "once I'm through with this universe you get the decade off. I've just got to kill Mel in more ways than one and then I could give you your own planet. Think your men can work a little harder this next month until all of that gets done?"

"Of course ma'am. Our duty is to serve–"

"Save it."

Tamarax looked around at her station as they flew through it. Everything was coming together. She had an army, she had the ultimate weapon and she had her looks (ha ha). Most importantly; she couldn't wait to watch the universe burn before she recreated it in her own way... She figured she'd call it Tamaraxia or something stupid like that.