by Jean Kilczer
“We could all use a shower!” Tony slapped my shoulder. “I think you saved our lives.”
“He did,” Joe said.
Gloria went up on her toes and kissed my muddy cheek.
I smiled at her.
She winked and lowered her head shyly.
Tony squinted down the tunnel and stroked his beard. “What did those tags want, anyway?”
“They – “I started.
“It's government business,” Joe said. “Classified.”
Spirit? Did I grow my tel power?
You did that, my alien friend. And your stretched mind will never regress to its former state. You are more prepared now for your future encounters.
What future encounters?
I can sense the turning of time, but only Great Mind knows the possible fantail of possibilities.
Thanks, buddy. That narrows things down.
You're welcome…tag.
I shook my head, gently. My sarcasm was lost on his alien mind. Do me a favor?
What is it now?
If Great Mind deigns to send predictions about my future, will you let me know?
As usual, Jules Terran, you ask too much.
And as usual, Spirit Kubraen, your answers tell me nothing that can help me.
You continue to ask the wrong questions. Will you live? Will you die? When will you ask what to learn in your life-cycle?
When I'm not concerned with what's waiting around the next corner! I cut the link. I hate to argue with know-it-alls!
Chapter Four
The briefing by the W-CIA on planet Alpha was brief. I think they just wanted to check me out. I guess I passed inspection, though one bald tag asked me why I didn't get a haircut. I gave him my stock answer: It keeps my neck warm.
Joe had recommended that they take me onboard for this mission, and being a respected member of the agency, even though retired, they agreed.
Now Joe was my contact person, and I was Jules Rammis, Special W-CIA Agent. I thought at least I'd get a pair of dark, company-issued sunglasses. But no.
Joe and I could no longer be seen together, for the same reason that agents didn't know each other's names. I was dubbed code name Enigma and turned over to Joe for the details of my mission.
We sat in the back of a stuffy windowless government van and ate cold sandwiches and drank cold coffee while Joe gave me instructions on my mission.
I was to infiltrate General Rowdinth's hideout and pretend to be as greedy and disgruntled as the general and his sorry team of slimes. My story was that the government didn't give me enough creds for my humanitarian work on Syl' Terria and then again on Halcyon.
“I dunno, Joe,” I said. “The general just has to check my credcount. I gave a buddy, Jack Cole, a good piece of it for his help in the Loranth affair, and for his family, but there's a pretty good-sized chunk still left.”
“Your credcount's not available to eyes. And your story is that you're pissed because after all that you did, you're still just an anonymous tag looking for a good government job to get by on.”
“You know, you've almost convinced me.”
“Good! You'll have to be to bring this off.
“But what about my work for the Los Alamos National Lab. It's another source of income.”
He nodded. “We've got that covered. Now, while you were on planet Alpha, you read the minds of some senators and high government officials and guess what?”
“I discovered General Rowdinth's plot to rob the depository. And I learned that two disgruntled NASA scientists had stolen the Dark Energy Project's documents and were now the general's colleagues.”
“I'm listening, kid.”
“And I wanted in on it too! I'll tell Rowdinth that I could return to planet Alpha under the guise of applying to some more government departments for a cushy job. And while I'm there, I'll relay information to him on W-CIA's plans to negotiate on his demands, and on…” I shook my head. “God, and on his threat to destroy all of Earth, the fucking crote!”
Joe sat back and smirked. “There's a good chance you'll bring this off.”
“Am I what you call a double agent?”
He folded his arms and stared at me. “I'll tell you what you call it, kid. It's goddamn dangerous work, is what it is. The Vermakts are an aggressive race.” He made a face and put aside his salami sandwich. “Too aggressive for the Worlds Government to accept their bid to enter the Interstel community of planets and have access to the members' technology.”
“Is that the race General Rowdinth belongs to?”
He nodded. “The Vermakts. They're the only civilized race on their planet, Fartherland. If you can call them civilized. If this general decides that you're a double agent, I hate to think how you'll die, but it won't be a pleasant death.”
“I'm counting on the cyanide capsule for a quick departure from this mortal coil.”
“That's what worries me.” He furrowed his brow. “You've acted a bit suicidal, besides your usual reckless nature, since Willa passed away. No cyanide capsule, Jules. The only thing you'll bite is the bullet.” He sipped coffee.
Joe was right. A part of me wanted to chuck it all and join Willa. Problem was, Great Mind might not be inclined to let me join her, whichever planet she had reincarnated to, and whatever form her body had taken. My throat tightened and I did my best to hold back tears, but a few slipped past my eyes. I wiped a hand across my face.
Joe looked away. “We'll drop you off on planet Fartherland, near Gorestail. It's the only town on the planet, and we'll provide you with a hovair and supplies. They'll be waiting for you in an underground parking lot at the Gorestail spaceport. Mostly Terran and alien gold miners go into town for recreation. But a few of the native Vermakts show up.” He took a bite of his salami sandwich, then threw it back into the bag. “Our field agents haven't been able to locate the general's underground hideout, but according to intelligence reports, he's still somewhere on Fartherland. We'd like you to wander around town, probe the natives and pick up a clue or two. For some reason that I can't decipher, the Vermakts are loyal to this crotefucker, Rowdinth.”
I nodded. The crotefucker who had caused Willa's death. I wanted to live long enough to send General Rowdinth to the flames of hell by my own hands. I wanted to see him squirm and watch his eyes bulge and his tongue swell. I wanted to see his face turn bright red when I cut off his air and crushed his windpipe and looked him in the eyes as his lights went out. Some Mafia tag had long ago said that revenge is a dish best served cold.
I didn't agree.
“What're you thinking, Jules?”
“Oh.” I studied my sandwich. The soggy white bread had folded over my fingers. The cold cuts and cheese were plastered to the bread. The mayonnaise had seeped through and wet my hand. “Oh, about the satisfaction of a hot meal.”
Joe shook his head.
Chapter Five
General Ki Rowdinth pulled his dire-wool blanket tighter around his narrow shoulders and bulging hips as he studied the two aliens who stood before him in the great room of his sunken citadel. He leaned back into the artificial intelligence chair. It detected the slight temperature drop in his skin and instantly raised the heat in leather-covered filaments.
Four members of the general's own Elite Guards, in black and silver uniforms, with silver slashes of lightning bolts across the shoulders, and high military hats, flanked the general, their black marble eyes fixed on the aliens.
General Ki Rowdinth studied the Altairian and Vegan lackeys who stood before him. He flicked a glance at Drackin the Shayl. “I have chosen you three for a mission of vital importance to Fartherland.” Rowdinth's voice was tight and strident. “Do not fail me. I do not take kindly to failure.” He glanced at the Shayl and his lip curled. Drackin lay sprawled before the fireplace like a grotesque pet, digging talons restlessly into the thick rug. His leathery wings, folded across his back, gleamed in firelight. His hooded white eyes glowed from deep within his skeletal head. Th
e tawny fur that covered his muscled body seemed to shimmer as the great fireplace snapped and roared, as though reflecting the winged creature's own temperament. Drackin never flinched, never showed fear at General Ki Rowdinth's commands, or his temper tantrums, and this greatly annoyed the leader of the Vermakt race of Fatherland.
The chair gently probed and located the general's tight muscles in his back and neck, and began a shiatsu massage. It scanned his brain, detected the beta waves of an agitated mind state, and lowered its patron's brain rhythm to an alpha state of attentive relaxation.
The Vermakt National Anthem emanated from both sides of the backrest. The four Guards stood at attention with their clawed hands pressed together before their snouts.
A small compartment in the armrest of Rowdinth's chair slid open and a crystal goblet of 1986 Earth's Penfold's Grange wine emerged in a golden goblet. With its patron in a relaxed state, the chair turned on its subliminal audio and recorded the conversation.
The towering, green-scaled Altairian, his broad head buried within the bubble helmet of ammonia and methane, still wore his Interstel military uniform. He shifted uneasily under the general's stony stare. His scaly tail lay curled and trembling around his flat feet. Beside him, the shorter, white-furred Vegan stood unsteadily on hind legs. Massive front paws, with hooked claws, dangled at his sides. Only the Shayl seemed unimpressed by the general's disdainful demeanor and his ominous silence, and that continued to annoy Ki Rowdinth.
The chair responded with whispered messages. You have been chosen by Providence to lead your people. You are their savior. Their Messiah. The Great Time has come, my lord!
“Yes,” the general hissed softly and swirled his drink. He breathed deeply as smoke from the real wood fire scented the air, and watched imported tropical birds chirp and flit from branch to branch in paper-layered cellulose trees.
“Tell me what I hired you to do,” he ordered Huff, the thickset Vegan.
“Well…” Huff looked up anxiously at Zorga, the Altairian. “Well – “
Zorga shifted his triangular feet and glanced down at his companion.
“Well, sir,” Huff began in stelspeak, “you – “
“That's sire!” Zorga nudged Huff.
Rowdinth allowed himself the pleasure of a grin at their discomfort.
“Oh, that's right,” Huff said. “Sire. To bring the Jules Terran telepath to you without his prior knowing of where your citadel is buried.”
“That's subterranean!” Zorba corrected, “ye oxygen-poisoned pritcull.”
“Oh, yes!” Huff shook his furry white snout. “Without the Terran's prior knowledge of what he is…uh, where he is in the sub-Terran.”
Bubbles streamed around Zorga's enclosed head.
“And in what condition?” Rowdinth said too softly. A quick rage began within the general. He hated to deal with inferior races, but in this case, it was necessary. The chair tried unsuccessfully to compensate for his darkening mood.
Huff glanced up at Zorga and nervously rubbed his forepaws together.
“What condition,” Zorga whispered, “hole in the rear!”
“Oh.” Huff nodded and drew back long lips to display pointed teeth in a smile. “Undamaged.”
The general smiled back, a cold leer that stretched back lips and showed a predator's set of fangs. He studied the two Earth White Sharks that swam in circles within a round tank and wondered if they would enjoy a meal of Altairian fillets and Vegan steaks.
The chair sensed its patron's sexual arousal at the prospect of watching the lackeys being flayed and fed to the sharks, and flicked on the holo-stage. It chose bare-breasted Tahitian Earth girls in grass skirts and lays of crimson flowers as they performed an erotic dance to a fast drumbeat, with palm trees and the South Pacific Sea for backdrop. A heavy scent of flowers wafted from wall ducts. The general breathed in the perfume. Terrans had treated him badly, when, as a child, he had accompanied his mother to Gorestail. A mob of drunken Terran miners had pointed and laughed at Rowdinth and his mother's resemblance to some lesser species of Earth's rodents. They had called his mother a fat rat, and had kicked her and knocked her to the ground. When he'd tried to help her up, they had laughed and kicked him too. The shock and humiliation still cut like a sharpened stone.
As though those insults weren't enough, the Worlds Government had insulted the entire Vermakt race when they turned down Fartherland's bid to join the interstellar community. Rage had become a continuous fire that burned as though consuming him. He could not…he would not tolerate their insults.
He touched his closed eyes with trembling, clawed fingers, remembering. He had gone blind after that great insult. His eyes had burned and he could not see. The A.I. chair, bought with the large deposit of credits endowed by the owners of the mining camp after the humiliation by their Terran workers, had healed him. It had brought back his sight with its full attention to his needs.
Years later, as an adult, he'd had The Vision. A divine angel with a halo as golden as the gold from Fartherland's mines had descended in a dream and unveiled his great mission to save his downtrodden people. He alone could raise them from their dirt-poor living conditions and lead an army to invade and conquer Earth and each colonized planet in succession, until the Terrans were wiped off the face of the known worlds, and all the other alien ethnic groups were subjugated to the superior race of Vermakts. The credits had allowed him to build his hidden citadel within the sacred ground, and now the laboratory too, where Geek and Nerd continued their work on dark energy.
His time had come! He pictured a lifeless Earth spinning through space. The Vermakt people's time had come!
He would gladly embrace suffering, he yearned for it, and even death, for revenge on the imperious race of Earth. He would destroy the rat-eaters, even if they met his demands. The die was cast, as they themselves would say. They did not have long to enjoy their haughty intrusions on Fartherland and the stolen gold of his people's mines. With the help of the two Terran scientists, who foolishly thought they were his colleagues, the vicious Terran race would perish. He gripped the wine goblet tightly. He would have the last joke on planet Earth!
“Now go!” he told Zorga and Huff, and take that devil's spawn with you.” He gestured toward the Shayl with his glass. Wine spilled. “Though I don't know why Nerd and Geek hired the demon in the first place!”
“Who?” Huff whispered to Zorga.
“The two NASA scientists, ye dummy pritcull.”
“Oh.”
The Shayl hissed, unfolded his wings and flapped them for answer, throwing spectral shadows on the stone floor from the raging fire behind him.
“He can fly, General Rowdinth,” Zorga ventured.
“So can a hovair,” Rowdinth responded.
The four Guards at his side chuckled at their leader's sly joke.
Rowdinth gestured toward the portal. “On your way out, stop at my museum. I have five new additions you might find interesting.”
“Oh?” Huff smiled. “The stuffed prizes of a hunting trip, sir?” He lifted shaggy brows in expectation. “I mean sire.”
“Of a failed hunting trip.” General Rowdinth smiled back. “Five stuffed human animals.” He sipped wine and found a momentary satisfaction in Huff and Zorga's shock. He slid a look at Drackin, who showed no response except to lick his bony-plated lips and stare back. Fucking gargoyle! the general thought.
The chair quickly responded to its patron's sudden frustration with a squirt of a designer drug into the air around him. The general leaned forward, forgetting his drink. “What choice did I have?” he shouted. “They failed me, the miserable Earth-spawn miscreants. They allowed the Terran Jules Rammis to escape!” He pounded his fist on the armrest. “I am the victim. Because of their ineptitude, I am forced to suffer a defeat!” He leaned back in the chair as the drug took effect. “There are three more empty pedestals that stand waiting next to theirs. Pray you do not force me to fill them.” A semblance of satisfaction touched
his uneasy mind as Huff's eyes widened and his long pink tongue lolled out from his snout as he panted.
Zorga's gas-filled back tank sounded an alarm that warned he was breathing too fast. The Altairian's bumpy skin darkened to olive green and his thick, exposed tail lost scales as it shuddered against the hard floor.
The general sipped the last of his wine. He ran his gaze along Huff's fine, white fur and watched it lift in the draft from the fire. These three would make elegant additions to his growing collection of stuffed aliens. He pictured the Shayl, frozen in a leap, wings spread. Yes, elegant. Perhaps he would add them even if they brought him the telepath.
He raised his empty glass to Zorga and Huff, and smiled reassuringly. “You may go now,” he said softly and nodded at Drackin, “and take the ogre with you.” Yes, he decided as he watched the three lumber, waddle, and prowl out of the great room, he would definitely claim them for his museum. A sanctuary where his people could enjoy seeing the degradation of those who humiliated them, standing frozen in death upon their pedestals, with plaques that told of their home planets, now under the domination of the super race of Vermakts. And when he was through with the Terran Jules, the telepath would also stand frozen among the other displays, his pink, hairless body naked for all the vermakts to see how weak these devil creatures really were.
The chair advanced the holo vid to show naked male dancers who leaped onstage in colorful loincloths and embraced the reluctant females with deep-throated grunts. Rowdinth's pupils dilated as the males roughly dragged the females to the grassy ground, stripped off their skirts, and mounted them.
The crystal glass slid from his fingers and shattered on stone as the males held down the females and forced themselves into the screaming girls.
His hand crept to his groin and his breathing quickened. The chair remained quiet. It knew that General Ki Rowdinth loved to watch animals being raped. He had raped many captive animals himself, male and female, in this very chair.
