Sunday March 14, 2004
Book 4: The Blackness Between — Epilogue: Taking a Crack at Payback

And thus ends The Blackness Between, Schlock Mercenary Book 4... Astute readers may be wondering what became of Tunguska'ssurvivors, what Tagon and Breya will do with this little fleet of theirs, and whether or not those still-mysterious "Dark Matter Entities" (now regularly referred to as "DaMEs" by forumgoers who jumped all over the author for never bothering to come up with a name of his own for them) are going to rise up and make war with the entire galaxy.

Indeed, this information is not in Book 4. You could order Scrapyard of Insufferable Arrogance, Schlock Mercenary Book 5 (along with a slew of other Schlock Mercenary titles) for answers. Or you could keep clicking your way through the archives one strip at a time.

Note: The author makes no promises that any of the above questions will be answered in Book 5.

Coins

Transcript

Narrator: It's been a week since the U.N.S. Battleplate Tunguska was destroyed. During that time our heroes have been pretty busy.
Narrator: It was a boring kind of busy though. Not much to tell, much less draw funny pictures about.
Narrator: Okay. So there was that one day when Jevee tried to claim that she'd planned this all along hoping Tagon would let her out of the brig. . .
Narrator: It's a good thing they went back for Bunnigus, Voyt, and the Mobile Hospital, because Jevee's eye now wouldn't stay put without medical help.
Xinchub: Too bad your purple skin hides the bruises.
Narrator: Tagon would have killed her, but he had to stop Xinchub from doing it first. Interventions can be relaxing, done right.
Jevee Ceeta: Yeah. Well your fat lip matches your fat face.
Narrator: Xinchub even signed their chit (In exchange for his reconstructive surgery.)
Tagon: This number looked big before I started on the payroll.
Narrator: Breya and her company remained cut off from their own resupply, though technically the Athens and the Sarasota were still U.N.S. property.
Breya: Look at it this way, Tagon. Now you have Monkeys.
Narrator: This did not stop anyone from pretending, for at least a little while, that between the two of them, Tagon and Breya now had their own Fleet.
Narrator: The funerals for Colonel Clarence Jaksmouth and Ensign Flib Sh'vuu, along with another half-dozen casualties were a solemn reminder of how much worse things could have been.
Sign: Coffinpedo MkIV

"Putting the 'Fun' back in your funeral!"

Narrator: That didn't stop everybody from complaining, though.
SFX: Fiddle fiddle
Der Trihs: Kevyn, this prosthetic body-thing is terrible.
Kevyn: That was the only set I could find with matching pieces. You could do worse than a full suit of dwarf armor.
Der Trihs: Yeah? Not very much worse.
Schlock: Now you look just like you do on TV!