There was a stunned silence. Nrog shrilled, “You lie!” He advanced on Miko, lashed out a motilator, slapping him across the room.
Star surged up and hobbled to Miko’s side where he lay on his belly, gasping in anguish. “Brute! Leave him alone!” One of the Zikri guards caught her up in its slime-pocked motilators. She squirmed, pounded fists uselessly in its iron grip, and battered it with her heels. Her legs dangled a foot off the ground.
Miko rolled over, wheezing out a curse.
“Let me go!” Star shrieked. “Why don’t you die, all of your foul race!”
On a flick of motilator, Nrog urged Basilursk forward to snatch at Star, dragging her kicking and screaming toward the first of the empty tanks.
“No!” rasped Miko.
Too late. The Zikri dipped a tentacle round her mouth to stop her outcries. He carted her before the glowing glass. Glistening tentacles lifted her up and over the brim.
With its powerful front motilators it held her under the pale green brine while she thrashed and kicked, her ashen hair askew. A wild look of terror was branded on her face. She struggled. No use.
Miko crabbed to his feet, striking out and yelling—but slimy tentacles held him back. In teary-eyed horror, he watched as Star convulsed in back-arching agony as she drowned. Floating, suspended in green fluid, she stared out from behind the glass, her lips parted in a small O. Bubbles trickled from her mouth to the surface. He gave a wretched howl as Mentera blasters arced his way.
Chapter 23
Usk spat out white fluid and backed away as Mentera lumo blasters leveled on him.
Nrog’s shadow fell on Miko. “I trust this is a warning for you to show proper deference. All will go the easier for your locust friend and the female.”
“I’ll kill you,” rasped Miko. He started forward, but Nrog’s motilators kept him back. He stared helplessly at Star, every cell in his body wanting to lunge forth and strangle Nrog with his bare hands.
“I hardly think so. You and your rebellious friend are in no position to do that.”
Jring called, “Enough of this charade, Nrog.” He signaled to his aide to apprehend Usk.
The simulacrum, bearing silent witness to all until now, glanced in idle interest toward the tank with Star and the other creatures bobbing placidly in the pale water. “Intriguing, intriguing. Treating your guests so disrespectfully. Bravo, Admiral! By plunging your naysayers in tanks, you hope to gain their fear and respect. You have not won against them by going the way of the brute. You’ll only make them angrier, and angrier. Perhaps this is what you wish, but it won’t save you.”
“Says who? We’ve choreographed this invasion to crush the humans completely, confirm our supremacy.”
The simulacrum shrugged. “Perhaps. Logic dictates it will work, but too many variables cloud the issue. Despite your energetic leadership, I daresay, foresight is lacking, since you have not considered all the variables. You’ve set yourself up for failure.”
“Failure? What failure? Have you foreseen any aftermath of this war?”
“Perhaps. But you doubt my very existence so...”
“Admiral,” interrupted Jring, “do we have time to waste conversing with this memory module?”
“Quiet, Jring. I want to hear this imposter.”
“Very well,” said the simulacrum, “look what the powers to be have orchestrated. We have rolled the dice and played god, as The Masters. Created monsters like yourselves, and now the cubs have come to play with sticks and stones and fire and steel to beat in the heads of their brothers.”
“A flowery allusion,” derided Jring, “but a vast oversimplification. Masters,” he scoffed. “Why beget such a disparate pantheon of species? It’s as impossible as it is improbable.”
The simulacrum grinned its ape-like grimace, if such were possible. “Is it so outlandish as not to be obvious? Like all dutiful parents, to see the children play, then fight and wage war with one another, at last to triumph over all the others. The cycle repeats itself while the other tribe rises up and conquers its rival. The ultimate cycle of the ages. War, peace… Peace, war. Rulers rising, rulers falling, then to rise from the ashes yet once again. On and on forever and ever. Just as it happened to us. I find the irony amusing.”
“I find no irony in any of it,” chittered Nrog.
“Then you have no sense of humor, Admiral, and have much to learn.” Nrog bridled, but the simulacrum rippled its shoulders in what might have been an indifferent shrug. “The journey is long, Admiral. Yes, very long. Yet time is infinite…and much of it is an illusion.”
“Enough riddles,” snapped Jring. He piked up a gold-pincered claw. “I opt we pull the plug on this bombastic automaton and dispose of the prisoners.”
Nrog lifted a motilator. “Not just yet, Jring. There are pieces of this puzzle which still remain unanswered. Like, for example, where do the humans fit into all this?”
The simulacrum clipped out an ape-like grunt. “That’s a question I am forbidden to answer.”
“Answer the question, proxy, or risk annihilation,” threatened Jring. “We will plumb your innards, and short-circuit your cerebus.”
“As I mentioned before, you will wait a long time, Princeps. The information you seek is buried so deep in the lattice of my memory crystal that it would take a million supercomputers a million years to find such information.”
Jring clacked his claws. “Impossible. You speak on the edges of hyperbole.”
Miko did not like the sinister glow on Nrog’s
