by George Tome
“Where are your screens?” asked one of them.
“What screens?” he growled.
“Ugo!”
The jure had no intention of making their lives any easier, so he just threw them a fierce look, holding his jaws clenched. Then one of the grahs stumbled on something invisible and fell to the ground. She leaped to her feet, rubbing her face. Driven by a suspicion, she blew a fine golden powder she had materialized in her palm, which briefly outlined one of the invisible displays nearby. The Sandara blew again, and before the display had a chance to disappear, she tapped on its surface.
“Stay visible, or I’ll make you a nice hole!” she shouted, pointing a laser lens at it.
Trembling in fear, the red architect followed her orders and remained visible. With the help of the other fighters, more and more displays were found on the hill. Soon, a whole pack was escorted to Ugo, amid the cheerful shouts of the fighters.
After they had found all the interfaces, his captors again gathered around him.
“Don’t kill me,” he said, sighing.
“Give me a reason!” snapped one Sandara, pointing her sarpan at his neck.
“I can help. I… I can help you drive this ship.”
“Kill him!” shouted another one. “We don’t go anywhere from here!”
“All riiiight… go ahead and kill me,” the monster grinned. “Gill will die, too, but that’s your choice.”
“What do you mean he’ll die?” asked the Sandara holding the sarpan.
“He’s bluffing,” jumped another one.
“Right, I’m bluffing,” he mocked her.
The first Sandara poked him in the throat, looking indifferently at the bleeding wounds gaped by the fangs of her sarpan.
“I’m counting to three.”
Ugo could read the determination in her eyes and knew she wasn’t joking.
“Gill is not going to return,” he said quickly.
“What?”
“Do you think the Grammians will let him go to the Federals? I’m sure they will kill him before he reaches the Rigulians. Think a bit logically. Oh, I forgot you can’t do—ouch!” he cried when the female jabbed him deeper.
“You monster, don’t forget you’re at my mercy!”
“If you want my help, get your piece of scrap off my neck!” he replied defiantly.
Sandara pretended she didn’t hear, leaning even harder on the weapon’s handle.
“All right, we’ll spare your life for the moment,” said another Sandara, pushing aside the sarpan of the first clone. “Say what you have to say, monster!”
“The prophet is really friendly with the aliens called Grammians. I believe… I’ve some theories about…”
“Leave the theories aside,” a Sandara said, cutting his explanations short. “What’s with Gill?”
“Well, the Grammians won’t let him contact the Federals. I have my reasons to believe he’ll be attacked on Antyra’s outskirts.”
The Sandaras felt the world crumbling around them. From what Gill had told about the so-called Antyran gods, the Grammians, they realized they had to take Ugo’s appraisal seriously.
“Which I don’t dislike at all,” Ugo hurried to add, “but I tend to believe that you’re not going to agree.” He paused, grinning, before continuing, “And here comes my part—”
“Which is?”
“Errr… I could drive this ship…”
“No way!”
“I could teach one of you to drive it…”
“That sounds better.”
“I hope you understand that it will take some time before we pull this thing off!” he exclaimed with feigned exasperation. “If you’d give me back my architects and let me drive it, we’d take off quickly!”
“Regardless of the risks,” one of the Sandaras said, “you’re not getting anywhere near the displays. But there’s one thing I don’t get, and I really want you to enlighten me: Why were you so anxious to shoot Gill if you’re so sure that the Grammians are going to attack him anyway?”
“You see, my dear niece,” said Ugo, this time without daring to sound as if he were mocking her, the memory of the sarpan’s teeth in his neck still lingering, “even I learn a few things now and then. I learned to appreciate this Antyran! He escaped so many times from the prophet’s tail that I was afraid he might do it again. And since I am acquainted with the Grammians, I’m not convinced they’re up to the task of killing him. It would have been much safer to blast him with my own hands. You know I’m a big fan of things done thoroughly,” he tried a reluctant smile.
At that point, several Sandaras emerged on the hill, dragging what appeared to be some sort of huge egg. Ugo almost burst into laughter, realizing they wanted to close him inside it, until he noticed the air tremor along the inside walls. The walls and ceiling were made from guval teeth, and only the floor had a small spot with the roots up, allowing a space for him to stand. But underneath it, other teeth raised their deadly heads, so it was obvious he couldn’t escape through there.
“Spacious dome,” a female said mockingly as soon as the egg arrived nearby.
Ugo heard one of the Sandaras, who was busy studying a captured red architect, say loudly, “Well, well, did you know that Uncle Ugo recorded several experimental avatars before he died?”
Unbearable! he thought, squirming. How did she find out so quickly?
One of the Sandaras pushed him rather unceremoniously into the egg, which was installed on a pile of boulders. Ugo lost his balance and hit his back on the wall of teeth, which promptly bit his flesh.
“You know it hurts like hell, don’t you?” he lamented.
“Yes,” the Sandara who had pushed him in replied, smiling. “Yes, I know.”
***
While the Sandaras were struggling to put the abomination in chains, Gill struggled to order something to eat from the printers on the Grammian ship’s bridge—he was pretty sure that another serving of the horrible porridge would be unbearable. The stuff tasted so bad he’d rather chew the synthetic fluff he slept on than eat that atrocity again.
After spending some time reading the huge printer index, he finally found something that resembled food. It was a cake of bozal pulp with four asok balls pressed on top of it. He couldn’t believe his luck—he had finally found Antyran food onboard the Grammian ship! He tasted it, and to his surprise, it was really good.
Bent over the navigation table, he was staring at Antyra’s star when, suddenly, one of the hot balls melted the bozal pulp and fell through his fingers—right on the navigation table. The surface, being tactile, reacted to the mishap in the worst possible way: Antyra’s star vanished from the screen, and the ship made a series of crazy jumps and tumbles.
With his hearts shrunk as a fluff of licant, he threw the cake and wiped off the table, causing even more chaos in the navigation systems. I have a hunch the Grammians weren’t allowed to eat here, he thought, upset by his carelessness. It took him some time to find Antyra and set the course in the right direction.
CHAPTER 15.
“Today is the end of innocence!” Baitar Raman shouted, grinning at his Gondarran assassins before he gave the order to attack. Of course, anyone—including Raman—would find it very hard to imagine the bloodthirsty fighters of the misty swamps as ’innocents’. And rightly so: the armor of the worthiest ones didn’t dry for days, constantly soaked in the blood of their victims. But compared with what they were going to do, any other crimes they had done in the past could indeed be considered just some silly mischief. For Raman ordered them to destroy the grah civilization.
***
The small light on the Antyran system map had been blinking for quite some time, but Omal 13 had no eyes for it. In fact, he didn’t have eyes for anything, given that he lay, collapsed, in his muddy vat, trembling violently, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. His green, scaly hammies were making countless ripples while his moans of pleasure echoed in the room, leaving no doubt about what was happening.
The ambassador was slipping into hibernation…
The door opened widely, and another Rigulian carried by a large vat rushed inside.
“Oma—hey! What’s going on?” he exclaimed, surprised. At a glance, he understood the situation. “He did it. He really did it,” the Rigulian muttered, stupefied by the ambassador’s oblivion, shaking his head incredulously. “Rico 3, bring the regression hormones,” he shouted to the Corbelian sphere following him.
Another Rigulian, at least twice as tall as Omal 13, stormed into the room, shouting from the doorstep, “He did it, right?”
“What are you so happy for?” barked the first alien, seeing his broad grin. “Do you realize the situation he has put us in?”
“Err… I made a bet,” he burst out. “With Laola 27 from the farm. I told her he couldn’t hold out until we leave!”
His laughter froze when he saw the other one’s frowning face.
“Rico 3, you never follow the protocols. Look how you present yourself in front of the medir.96 I’m not pleased with you at all! You sure you aren’t sclerotic yet? It wouldn’t hurt if you paid a visit to the evaluation room. Maybe it’s time for you to take your rejuvenating serum.”
Rico 3 threw him an offended look, but he didn’t dare to confront him, reading in his eyes that it wouldn’t work this time. Therefore, he bowed his head in an attempt to look remorseful, mumbling, “I don’t think I’m sclerotic. I mean, I’ll be the first one to find out, don’t you think?”
“Then you’d rather have a report that will get you fifty years on a roadworker planet to handle the sarken irrigations?
“All right, all right—I’ll go later,” he groaned. “Now, what do you want from me, Medir Egar 9?”
“Give him the serum,” Egar 9 ordered.
“Hmm, isn’t it too late for that? We risk provoking the barra syndrome. How long has he been like this?”
“Last evening he was all right. Give him the implant,” he ordered.
Rico looked at him, undecided.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea…”
“The sarken probes sent the results, and we have the distorter’s coordinates. He has to make a decision!”
“Shouldn’t we ask Sirtam 4 what to do?”
Egar sighed, annoyed by Rico’s excessive caution. Still, he had no reason to be angry; after all, if he had to choose a word to best describe the Rigulian species, it would be “lacking initiative.” Well, two words…
He could have given a direct order, but what was the point of forcing Rico’s hand? Rico was right—better let Sirtam make the decision.
He floated beside Omal’s table and touched its controls.
“I’ll move him to a habitacle in the prehibernation tanks to make sure his skin doesn’t fuse with his vat,” said Rico.
“Wait until I speak to Sirtam.”
***
The Grammian ship reached Antyra’s outskirts without notable mishaps—maybe because Gill had stopped eating near the navigation table—and, obviously, he now had to prepare for the fun part. There was the little detail of contacting the Rigulians right under the nostrils of the Grammians… Grammians who wouldn’t appreciate the capture of one of their ships and would do anything to “host” him in their sinister neural probes.
Then there was Grammia’s unknown relation with the Federation. If, as Ugo estimated, they had known each other for over a thousand years, there was undoubtedly the unpleasant possibility that the Grammian ships could fly among the Rigulians, and he’d land straight in the claws of the enemy. Be that as it may, he thought. If the chance to fight for Sigia appeared again, he had no intention of turning his tail like a coward. Moreover, someone had to alert the Rigulians that their potential “allies” were behind the bright idea to hide Antyra in the darkness of space for 1,250 years. Surely the news would be of interest, to say the least.
He did a rough estimate on the navigation map of where the Rigulian fleet might be, supposing that Baila “invited” them to the opposite side of Antyra III when he attacked it. The prophet most likely thought to place the Antyran star between them and the temple transports that assaulted Ropolis to hide his atrocities from the eyes of the aliens. Of course, in the meantime, Antyra III had changed its position, and he had no clue how to use the Grammian cockpits to find the exact coordinates.
He picked the place on the navigation table, hoping that the ship’s automatic devices were advanced enough to find the ships for him and put them on the main display.
Gill never thought he would feel it, but in a way, he regretted the absence of the abomination. He could have used the jure to drive the ship through any blockade. Why did Ugo have to be such a hopelessly mad case, beyond all hope of redemption?
One thing he had to do was to make a battle plan for the likely situation that he would come under attack. Even without the Guk harmonics, he knew that his chances weren’t particularly bright. He had no clue how to use the ship’s weapons, and frankly, he could barely keep the direction—that is, when he didn’t spill his food on the star map. After the unfortunate incident with the bozal cake, he abandoned the dangerous idea of playing with the navigation table, to avoid the awkward prospect of getting lost in the interstellar space.
On top of that, he never had any trace of technical skills. That also mattered when he picked his profession, in addition to his passion for the ancient legends. Gill remembered his last attempt to solve a technical problem, when he thought he could replace a purple bacteria filter in Tadeo’s dome on the thirty-second floor of the Archivists Tower. It had happened about five years before, shortly after he had been accepted on Tadeo’s team. The attempt ended with a fire alarm that evacuated the whole building, a day’s work for the two experts called in to fix the damage, and his solemn promise that he’d never again undertake such initiatives. For a while, he even had to endure the humor of some of his prankster archivist colleagues, who mockingly organized “security teams” to keep an eye on “Gill’s disasters,” which is how they liked to refer to his small blunders.
While Gill was still busy thinking of outlandish scenarios—each one more fanciful and impractical than the other—he was surprised by a blue warning on the main screen: two ships were detected flying on his tail. Did they see me? he wondered, feeling the cold shivers of anguish coiling his tail.
They were far away—somewhere to his left, at the very edge of the ship’s detection capacity. Gill hoped he might pass unnoticed, but soon he had to give up that pleasant illusion because it became obvious that the ships had changed their direction to intersect his trajectory.
He rushed to the navigation table, deciding that the right moment had come to abandon all caution. The thought that he might get lost in the interstellar space was now the least of his concerns. Therefore, he accelerated as much as the speed circle allowed, prepared to do some jumps if the chase turned ugly.
After a while, the situation changed—and not in a good way. The escorts were still following his ship, but three other ships popped up on his left flank, this time in front of his trajectory. Worst of all, he could make out their gray, sinister silhouettes, identical to his ship. The Grammians had finally found him!
With a glance, he realized he had to do something to avoid rushing into their line of fire. A simple thing would be to change the ship’s direction to the right and leave the pursuers behind, although that wouldn’t delay his defeat for long—five spaceships in a distortion front would travel faster than his vessel.
Since he had run out of options, he was about to touch the navigation table when his ship’s display wall zoomed in on a bunch of strange silhouettes that were somewhere in front of him. Their bizarre, tubular shapes, full of irregular bumps and with huge eggs at one end, had nothing in common with Grammian ships. It was the Rigulian fleet! Gill felt his hearts bouncing madly. He only had to solve the little detail of contacting them with the Grammians on his tracks…
He decided to keep his direction. Would the Grammians
have the guts to blast him right in front of the Rigulians? Somehow, he doubted it. After all, the reason why Baila didn’t excavate an ugly pit in the crust of the mining planet in place of Ropolis was that he wanted Gill’s bracelet “intact.” Perhaps it was going to work again, he thought, trying to stay positive, although he wasn’t particularly keen on testing the assumption on his very tail.
The three Grammian ships on his left approached menacingly. Then something happened in front of him: two ships detached from the Rigulian fleet. They’re coming to my aid!
His happiness didn’t last long, though, because they were Grammians, too. Now the gray ships surrounded him from three sides. Ugo was obviously right; the Grammians were part of the Federation—otherwise, how could their presence in the midst of the Rigulian fleet be explained? Perhaps even if he was going to meet the Rigulians, they would hand him over to Baila…
He realized that the Grammians weren’t firing at him, a pleasant surprise, but it was a good time to do something—anything—to avoid being boarded. Evasive maneuvers! Would his desperate wiggle fool anyone?
In his trips through the ship, he had eyed twenty small, unarmed rescue modules, easy to board from the bridge and just as easy to program. Maybe he could use one of them to slip to the Federals unnoticed. Of course, his enemies didn’t seem stupid, and until proven otherwise, he wouldn’t consider them as such. He’d run, but he’d run in style… However, he noticed right away the small crack in his plan—namely, setting up his Grammian ship as a decoy. There was no way to make it do some maneuvers while he was in the rescue module—even Ugo couldn’t find any trace of artificial intelligence on the ship.
The Grammian ships nearby approached cautiously, ready for boarding, when one of the small rescue vessels from Gill’s ship launched at maximum speed toward the Federal fleet. The move confounded them for a moment, but they quickly made up their minds: the three nearby continued their approach, while the two coming from the Federals slowed down to intercept the module.