What were these plant tendrils wrapped so tenaciously about Blest’s leg? What was that bulb that hatched the flying cricket? The thing that killed the Skugs and Mong’s mercs.
The alien plants must have given birth to the flying things—the dragonfly and the eel-lizard, then the flying cricket. How? A poignant mystery. I shuddered at the implication, thinking again of the gross leaf twined about Blest’s leg. The poor sod must be going out of his mind.
I closed my eyes. Shielded whatever remained of JR from the demons that would eventually take him. I let my mind travel inward, like those insistent monks had instructed me back in the prayer meetings. I flashed back on old memories, truths, lies, to past lives. Or were they past lives? Or just tricks of the imagination? The images, compelling enough, entailed fighting enemies with swords and gunpowder and electric wands then R4s, enemies so cruel and detestable that they threatened to bring down the empire. One minute I was a hero, then a broken-legged soldier, next a traitor, then some nameless beggar wandering the ghettos, slumming for scraps in back alleys. Was that this life, or a previous one? All a blur. My lingering dream morphed into the boy wanting to be a rocket scientist and save the world, then it flickered out like a candle flame to something else. The bombs of the warmongers fell ravaging my home planet, leaving thousands dead, and the camps and the flight of madness occurring afterward, a nightmare like any aftermath of war, but it all started to make sense. I saw the dance and drama of my life multiplied a million times over in the lives of countless others. Just little puffballs of existence flashing in and out of time, with little significance to speak of in the overall picture.
The quintessence of me was but a tiny drop of water dribbling down on the vast leaf of time. Dripping down into an immeasurable pool of life, to be drawn out, consumed, reborn, recycled into some new matter and new phenomenon. Humbling to see this, and yet disturbing to catch a glimpse of what could be reality.
And I thought and I dreamed and brooded in the green liquid as the days and the weeks drifted by.
Out of my suspended animation I sprang up in a groggy rush. The sounds of murmuring voices and the sensation of touch drifted nearby. I flexed my hand. The fingers moved with full power. No more did my knitted flesh or my bent fingers throb. As the water had the power to nourish the occupants in the tanks, so could it heal flesh and broken bones. As long as the individual wasn’t dead, the liquid could perform the miraculous.
I felt rough sandpaper hands slapping at my moist cheeks. Words struggled to come to my nerveless lips.
“Steady does it,” said the figure who pushed finger to my lip. “Well, Jet Rusco, how do you feel after your first rebirth?”
I stammered.
“It will take some minutes to readjust. It won’t do to talk. Look at Zan over there. Comatose. Afraid the poor lad couldn’t cope with his suspension. Alas,” Mong sighed. “I will have to throw the wretch back in the tank for a while to regain his wits.”
“Wha—” I sputtered, my lungs heaving with the effort of taking breaths of life-giving air.
“You have questions, I know. We will repeat this exercise, until you are cured of your insatiable desire to defy me. Blest is up next on the ropes. Each of you will take turns in the Mentera bathtub. The liquid heals all wounds, no matter how grievous. We will start the process all over again, then the pain will run deeper. Much deeper. Treat it as my gift to bring you to a level of awareness higher than what you have already attained. It is written in the Budo scriptures that enlightenment can come through pain.”
“F-Fuck you, Mong,” I croaked. “You rude fucking sadist. I s-shit down your throat and piss on your scriptures.”
The Star Lord sighed. “Blasphemy. Disrespect for the wise ones. Very bad. Behavior as this demands cleansing.” He signaled to Balt.
The fucker lieutenant grabbed me up like a sack of potatoes and tossed me back in the tank, making sure my head was sufficiently underwater for enough time. I struggled, screaming bubbles from my lips. No use. They drowned me, again.
Whole days passed in snail-crawling increments. The prolonged immersion had me fading in and out into weird and grotesque, infathomable worlds.
Again I contemplated the truth of the universe in an alien tank, an irony that did not escape me. For all purposes, I should be dead, physically and spiritually. Then it hit me...as that voice from deep within the psyche broke through the filmy layers of encroaching darkness and spoke in an echoing blur:
The Star Lord will destroy this universe. Such is the duty of an angel of death. He is a cancer that must be excised, hit in the most vulnerable place—through his adulation of the crickets. Your life’s purpose is not to sit encaged in brine, Jet Rusco. Do you not see it? Do you wish to suffer torture indefinitely like a chained beast? You must kill him. You must kill deftly. By striking at the core, the weakest link...
I’d come to believe Mong was invincible, but the monster had a weak chink in his armor, as did anyone else. It was those damn bugs. Mong worshiped them. They had no love for him. Why should they? I’d seen the evil glint in their eyes when he came sidling into the room and their brooding red glares trained on him. If I could escape, loose those creatures upon the compound, maybe there’d be a chance…But how, Rusco? You’re in a tank with half
