by Sean Allen
“Here’s the help I mentioned earlier,” Tyrobus said.
The little man wobbled awkwardly over to Dezmara and touched her forehead with the back of his hand. “How do you feel?” he said.
“Uh, a little confused,” she said.
“Well, that’s understandable. How about pain? Any pain?”
“My head hurts a little.”
“Follow my finger with your eyes, please,” he said.
“Can you wiggle your toes and fingers for me?” Dezmara did as instructed. “Good. I don’t have the equipment to make any scans of your brain, but I think you should be good as new in another month or so.”
“You’re a doctor?” Dezmara said.
“Yes,” the little man said. “And by the way, that’s a pretty clean application of Haleonex on your ribs.”
“Oh, thanks. Picked that up from a Dr. Weiloonyu after a little misunderstanding with a guy named Rilek and a Dissension soldier.”
“The Dissension!” he said with excitement. “And Rilek?!”
“That’s right,” Dezmara said, not quite understanding what the fuss was all about.
“When?! What Dissension soldiers? Did you get any names?!”
“Um, yeah. Major Otto Von Holt and a big guy…what was his name…Meru, M-M-Melu”
“Malo!” he shouted with glee.
“You know them then?”
“My dear, I know Otto and Malo very well. I was the Dissension’s chief medical officer, you see!”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
“Er—of course—I apologize. You can call me Doctor Blink or, um, just Blink!”
“Pleasure to meet you, Doc,” Dezmara said.
“Yes, yes! The feeling’s mutual, my dear. Now, how were Otto and Malo, hmm? Were there any other Dissenters with them?”
“The major was ship-shape,” Dezmara said, feeling a little like she was in the Dissension Army herself and commanded to give report, “but Malo wasn’t doing so well. He was unconscious in the infirmary when I saw him.”
“Oh, no! Did the doctor say what the diagnosis was?”
“No, I didn’t ask a lot of questions,” Dezmara said, a little saddened by the genuine concern in Blink’s voice. “As for other Dissenters, there was someone being kept in isolation—head injury or something—but I never really caught his name.”
“Oh, my!” Blink said as he looked down at the floor. “I wonder who that could have been?”
“Doctor,” Dezmara interrupted as politely as possible, “not that my running into your friends isn’t interesting and all, but, if you don’t mind me asking, what in the hell were you doing on that Durax outpost?” Blink’s face slackened with fear at the mention of his captivity. “The last time you and I talked, you were ranting about ‘the weapon’ and that ‘the weapon was complete’ and we were all going to die.” Blink sat stone still as he resisted the journey his mind was trying to take into his not-so-distant and mortifying past. “Doctor?”
“I was kidnapped from our base of operations—a converted mine—on Siriti 9. I don’t know how. I think someone may have injected me with a sedative in my sleep, because when I woke up, I was in the very cell where we last saw each other. The Durax tortured my mind for a while, just so I would know they meant business, and then they ordered me to design a weapon.”
“I didn’t think the Durax had much use for guns or ships or machines because of their mind powers,” Dezmara said. Simon shivered when he thought of the gruesome battle he had witnessed with the Irongores, and he envied Dezmara for being unconscious when it happened.
“That’s mostly true, my dear, but I’m not talking about bullets or blades. I’m talking about a biological weapon.”
“What, like a virus or something?”
“Yes, a viral infection is part of it, but it’s only the catalyst—the trigger, if you will—on the most destructive weapon ever designed.” He shook his head from side to side and fought back the tears that were beginning to gather in his small, dark eyes. “I was instructed to engineer a substance with similar qualities to the Serum, but, instead of allowing the mind of the infected person to block out the powers of the Durax, it has exactly the opposite effect!” Blink’s voice was rising in anger for what he had done, and Dezmara tried her best to keep him calm.
“It’s okay, doc,” she said calmly. “Can you tell me what that means exactly?”
“The Durax need to be within reasonable distance of their victims, depending on their level of power. As far as we know, only Helekoth has been able to accomplish a mind spike at any significant separation and that only on his own kind. Neural activity doesn’t cease, even when we are at rest or unconscious. The Durax break into a mind by traveling down the pathways of thoughts radiating from it, and these signals weaken over distance. The virus I designed boosts the signal—in a manner of speaking—and makes a mind controllable, theoretically, from one end of the known universe to the other. They call it the bio-amplifier.”
“So the Durax are going to infect the universe with their mind powers, so what? I mean, not that that isn’t bad enough. What I’m saying is, they’re doing that already, aren’t they? This just lets them do it from farther away, right?”
“I wish that was all,” Blink said in a dark tone Dezmara didn’t think someone of his obvious academic nature could possess. “The amplifier isn’t the weapon—the race of creatures they intend to infect with the virus is. You heard their awful screams back on the outpost.”
“What are they?” Dezmara said, feeling a small tinge of the creeps tickle her neck as she remembered the cries she had heard just before Simon showed up and sprung her from her fleshy, putrid smelling prison.
“Imagine a race of creatures with physical abilities to rival our friends here,” Blink said as he looked over at Tyrobus, “and the ability to reproduce a full-grown adult almost spontaneously.
“Helekoth is building an endless army of the most powerful soldiers the universe has ever known, and they will obey his every depraved, sinister command without question. They are called the Auchenor!”
“Whew!” Dezmara said. She was at a loss for words and she stared at the floor until she found some. “How long did you work on this thing?”
“Almost two years,” Blink said.
“Two years? Is that a long time?”
“Well, if you ask the Durax, two months was too long, but this sort of thing has never been done before—as far as I know—and I was ordered to design it in phases so it could be tested.”
“Tested? On who?”
“I’m not sure. I was never allowed to witness the tests as they were taking place, and I’m quite thankful for that. I only received a go-ahead for the next phase if the current one was successful.”
“What were the phases?” Dezmara didn’t know why this was so important, but her mouth was spitting out questions like she’d lost control of it.
“Phase one was mind amplification: being able to hear a complex organism that wasn’t another Durax from a distance. I would assume from an entirely different planet. Phase two was direct control of that organism’s actions, and phase three…”
“Phase three? Doc? What was phase three?” Blink was fighting back his guilt demons again.
“Contagion,” he said.
“Hmmm.” Dezmara’s head was still pounding from being spiked by the generals, and she made big circles with the tips of her fingers on her temples. There was something familiar about all this that twirled in her mind like pieces of a puzzle that kept slipping from her grasp as she tried to set them down and align their edges.
“Well, it sounds like we’ll all be slaves for the Durax by lunch tomorrow!” Simon said in his casually pessimistic way.
“How’d the Durax get the Serum you used to build the virus in the first place?”
“They didn’t get the Serum,” Tyrobus offered.
“An’ just how do you know that, mate?”
“Because I make the S
erum and deal directly with the Dissension colonel in charge of distributing it!” Tyrobus’ voice trembled with might as his muscular torso swelled, and Simon took several steps backwards.
“Not only that,” Blink said to deflect the rising tension in the room, “but there’s the fact that I used pure samples of Mewlatai DNA to manufacture the virus.”
“An’ how’d they get that?” Simon’s curiosity overpowered his fear, and if it waned at all after the question dribbled from his mouth, it didn’t show. “I mean, with all due respect, mates, isn’t your lot s’posed to be uncatchable?” He looked from Tyrobus to Kaelth and back again.
“I don’t think it was DNA from a living Mewlatai. I think Helekoth farmed the blood from a body.”
“Whose body?” Dezmara and Simon queried simultaneously.
Tyrobus’ face was grim, and his golden-olive eyes were raging with emotion that neither of them could pretend to fathom. “My brother—Blangaris.”
“And he’s dead, right?” Dezmara said, her manners overwhelmed by her need for answers.
Tyrobus’ lips curled up and revealed a vicious set of fang teeth in a silent threat aimed straight at her.
“I don’t mean any dishonor,” she said, raising her hands up by her chest with palms turned out. “I just ask because the Dissension soldiers I ran into were hunting a rogue Mewlatai who had killed one of their men during a staged Serum drop.”
“Killed?” Blink said. “Who was it? Who was killed?”
“I don’t know, Doctor. Like I said, I didn’t really ask any questions. I’m sorry.”
Tyrobus looked like Dezmara had just stabbed him through the heart with his own Kaiten. He wobbled on his legs before stepping back and leaning against the table behind him. “You’re certain of this?”
“Said they had an eyewitness to the murder, but the man was unconscious so I didn’t hear the actual account.” Dezmara didn’t like where any of this was going, and her face was frozen in a perpetual frown.
“Is it possible the Durax coulda…” Simon nodded at Kaelth, but Tyrobus failed to understand what he was trying to say. “You know, the whole house thing an’ the comin’ back to life bit that you don’t really consider comin’ back to life an’ whatnot.”
“Impossible!” Tyrobus growled in a voice that was more of a plea than an assertion. “Only a Mewlatai can resurrect another into their next house!”
“Tyrobus,” Dezmara said in the most polite voice she had, “if I may. How’d Blangaris die in the first place? Was it his last life…I mean, house?”
Tyrobus had turned his back to the room, and he was looking down at his table without seeing. Dezmara could hear his heavy breaths, and everyone in the room was silent out of respect for a man who was torn to shreds over the loss of his brother and still grieving. “That,” he said after a great silence, “is the story of the Serum, and it is long.”
“Good,” Dezmara said with genuine satisfaction. “I haven’t been so close to death so many times in my short eight years as I have in the last—let’s see, been here almost eight weeks—three months, and every time I get an explanation as to why, the Serum isn’t far from the thick of it. I want to know what it’s all about. I also happened to have…” She looked over at Blink expectantly.
“Oh, oh, yes, yes—at least another month!” Blink said enthusiastically.
“A month. Plenty of time for you to tell me the tale.”
Tyrobus stretched his arms out along the top of the table and crossed one foot behind the other. He held this pose for a few seconds, and Dezmara could see the wheels turning inside his head through his bushy hair. He breathed in deeply and then let the air escape slowly through his nose. “Very well,” he said as he grabbed a high-sided chalice from his workspace. He turned to face the group and rocked back and forth on his feet as if deciding whether to go through with it. He made up his mind and took a few short strides up to one of the side walls in the building, pushing it aside, and walking through the opening.
From the small crack left in the sliding door, Dezmara caught a glimpse of what looked like armor on some sort of stand, but before she could discern any detail, Tyrobus’ big frame filled the gap again. He was holding his Kaiten sword by the sheath when he reemerged. It was a deep burgundy—or what some might call blood red—and Dezmara couldn’t help but notice how closely it matched her flight suit and jacket. Tyrobus walked to Dezmara’s side, folded one leg over the other, and sat down. He set the chalice down between them and motioned for Kaelth to hand him the little candle still burning next to the Maituk statuette.
“If you don’t mind, Shendo,” Kaelth said as he handed the flaming stick of wax to Tyrobus, “I’ll take my leave now.” Tyrobus bowed his head slightly, and Kaelth slipped out and closed the door.
“For me to tell this story with the honor and reverence it deserves, and for you to see it as it unfolds in your minds’ eyes, we require these.” Tyrobus touched the candle to the contents of the bowl, and they ignited with a whoomp! Soft tendrils of gray, fragrant smoke curled up and hung between them. He motioned for Simon and Blink to sit, and once they were in place, he laid his sheathed Kaiten across his lap and placed his fingertips together.
“I’m glad you’re here with the Mewlatai,” a voice said clearly in Dezmara’s mind. “I’m glad you’re here with Tyrobus!” It was neither her rational mind nor the mysterious taunting voice from her past, and as she looked around to see if anyone else had heard it, Diodojo leaned his head hard into her shoulder. She scratched heavily behind his ears and then thought, “Me too, Doj. Me too!”
Tyrobus opened his eyes after what Dezmara assumed was a prayer or some kind of meditation, and she leaned her weight against the sturdy flank of Diodojo, settling in for the long story of the House of Daelekon.
Epilogue
Blangaris’ black paw gripped the stick of his Zebulon with crushing force. His search of the strange, hooded creature he had found on Clara 591 and her ship hadn’t given him any clues to the whereabouts of his cursed brother. The others—in the gleaming ship—had turned out to be nothing more than thieves, and he had considered gutting each one just to feel his Kaiten cut through flesh. He was certain the other runners would give away something, but they turned out to be Dissenters chasing their tails in Helekoth’s twisted game to destroy them—a game that he himself helped begin. Now they were headed for the system with Pelota del Fuego; most likely to attack the Berzerkers. Although he was sure they would fail, he hoped somehow they would infiltrate far enough into the vile Dunewokt catacombs to destroy, or at the very least maim, Killikbar.
His face deformed with rage at the thought of the general of the Berzerkers, and he made a pact with himself, forged in the fire of his seething hatred, that after he finished dismembering Tyrobus, he wouldn’t stop until his blade had sliced Killikbar to bloody ribbons. A demonic laugh rumbled in his gut, but before he could bask in the ecstasy of his murderous vision, a voice spoke inside his head: a voice he had heard in his youth several lifetimes ago, a voice only he and very few others of his kind could hear, a voice he had long forgotten.
“I’m glad you’re here with the Mewlatai. I’m glad you’re here with Tyrobus!”
“I’m glad you’re there too, my little Maituk,” Blangaris said, “and I will be with you soon!” He let the laugh that was smoldering in his belly erupt from his throat as he charted his course. The engines streamed jets of red wrath as the Zebulon ripped into space; headed at full speed for the last of the Daelekons and Blangaris’ long-awaited revenge.
END.
***
Thank you for purchasing Death Drop. I hope you enjoyed reading the story as much as I enjoyed writing it. Stay tuned for Daelekon, the second title in the D-Evolution series of novels. Please visit my website, www.devolutionnovels.com, for everything related to the D-Evolution Universe, including awesome character illustrations and bios, some tidbits about me, news, and more. You can also connect with the D-Evolution Universe online at:
D-Evolution Blog: www.devolutionnovels.com/blog
Facebook: www.facebook.com/DeathDropNovel
Twitter: twitter.com/DEvolutionBooks/
Myspace: www.myspace.com/devolutionnovels
I look forward to hearing from you! Sincerely—Sean Allen