He kept glancing with hollow heart over to Star who floated in pathetic passivity in the hated locust tank. Her hazel eyes glazed, blank orbs staring forward, unblinking as a speared fish. Her arms floated elbows out, as if she were comatose.
He must get her out of that tank! But how? She was sealed in, paralyzed by the water. He was weak, defenseless, with no weapons or means at his disposal. Where were his wretched powers of invisibility when he needed them? How fickle the universe was!
As he brooded, one of Jring’s guards caught up the cable hookup from Star’s tank and plugged the end into a circular indentation at his navel. The other end remained affixed to the plug and circuit box at the tank’s top. A sallow light glowed from the circuitry and the Mentera began to feed off Star’s essence.
Miko stared in sheer horror. The locust’s back straightened, his head lifted high, lips parted in a satisfied sigh as Star’s eyes took a murky dip and her whole body collapsed inward in the fluid’s suspension.
Miko could not bear the sight and he sagged, defeated, numbed by despair. His heart thickened in misery, his drive zapped, and he roared out in anguish, “Noooooo…”
Nrog flicked motilators in triumph on seeing his pain. He looked over at Jring with satisfaction.
The simulacrum continued with a sigh. “This allied invasion of yours. Nothing but games on a star-lit stage, albeit ones spanning light years. The Masters are watching. They’ve been watching for an eternity—though have long passed into ephemeral husks. It comes as no surprise to us, this war of yours and the anticipated outcome.”
Nrog clipped out an outraged chitter, clearly despising the simulacrum’s arrogant claims. “So, you have mapped out its outcome?”
“Of course. What do you think?”
Miko glared at Nrog, nursing a silent, seething wish that the luminous creature of the Masters would launch a firebolt and fry him.
“So, what is this outcome then?” Nrog sneered, his motilators flexing with suggestive menace.
The proxy smiled, a grim, disturbing rictus of a simian smile. “Such knowledge is beyond your limited intellect. Any disclosure would affect your part in the overall drama to come—it would set in motion a variation of the observer effect, altering the predicted outcome.”
Nrog’s aide rustled at his commander’s side. He spoke to him in a whispered guttural. “Sir, permission to dismantle this device and forcibly extract its secrets.”
“Granted, Basilursk. But not until I question this creature more.”
“As you wish.”
“It will do you no good, Admiral,” warned the simulacrum. “My circuits cannot be decrypted, or reverse-engineered, or even backtraced. Part of our advanced design was to install a pleuron node.”
“What is that?”
“A backtier whose very nature defies description. Consider your most advanced neural networks, those are but puerile snakes and ladders pathways to what the pleuron offers.”
“We Zikri are masters of decryption,” Nrog sputtered. “We revel in taking things apart.”
“Not as masterful as you think. How successful were you in decrypting these humans’ transmissions in real time?”
Nrog choked, as if wondering how the thing knew that.
“These humans, in fact, are just harbingers of your own doom. Even while you plunk them in tanks, others gather forces. Never underestimate the weakest link in your chain, or the smallest resistance to your supposed, invincible forces.”
Nrog’s face grew blue with rage. “I don’t care for your sanctimonious lectures.”
“No lecture, Admiral, simple facts.”
“Basilursk, shut this box down this minute. And kill these humans and the bug, if they are to be our ‘demise’.”
The simulacrum smiled. “Even if you kill these specimens, it makes no difference. The die is cast. There are others who have picked up the torch.”
Nrog laughed at the creature’s assertion. “At the moment ten thousand Zikri and Mentera ships are poised to storm the free colonies and subjugate every human man, woman and child. Tomorrow it will be a 100k.”
“What do I care who wins this fools’ war? The Masters are beyond death. You, as creatures of flesh and blood, cannot see that everything works according to clockwork formula. Before the Masters shed their mortal bodies, they learned how to transcend the laws of cause and effect.”
“That is impossible,” jeered Jring. “This genesis prophecy of yours is likewise preposterous. Who are you to tell us how it is to end and what has passed? What we’re capable of grasping? You’re a synthetic droid, nothing more, some voice programmed from the past.”
The entity responded in a toneless monotone. “I am everything—I am the future, the past, and the present. You cannot grasp the totality of what I am, what I have become, and what I will continue to be.”
“Gibberish,” grumbled Jring. “The Mentera will endure and outstrip all the races of the galaxy. As of this moment, engineers of ours are constructing a planet-size Ark—The Ark of the Future—a vast blimp full of Mentera, our youngest and most gifted progeny. To be outfitted with unlimited food in the form of humans and untold resources and technology. They will reach out to the farthest ends of the galaxy and spread the Mentera seed!”
Nrog’s polyp of a mouth gobbled. His motilators worked, somewhat paler now, as if his warrior sense only now perceived the sinister intentions of his allied partner’s race.
Miko knew in an instant that Jring had been goaded into revealing his master plan.
“So, it has all come to treachery!” Nrog roared, lifting fore-motilators in menace. “This ape-like thing from the past is an instigator, these human rebels are saboteurs, even you, Jring, and your skulking brood are fickle and ready to gobble up everything in the galaxy.” With exasperated venom, Nrog glided over and grasped the blue
