"He needs rest," Zepar positioned himself between the two of them and the Prime Minister. "Not surgery."
"But…" Lerajie started to object.
Eligor got that weird vibe that often kept him out of a shit storm. There were 60 men on this crew. Some of them should have been in the launch bay besides Furcas and Pruflas to take Lucifer off of that shuttle. For some reason the launch bay had been cleared before they had landed.
"Very well, Sir," Eligor grabbed Lerajie and dragged him out of there.
"What did you do that for?" Lerajie rubbed his shoulder where Eligor had bruised it the moment they got out of the launch bay.
"Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut," Eligor said. "Not the other way around. Or you'll get us both killed."
A nap, a hot shower, and a real home-cooked meal later instead of the awful remolecularized food cubes they'd eaten for four days in the shuttle, they met up and ran their usual shift playing bookends outside the door of Lucifer's harem. Just for the hell of it Lerajie went into the room to see if maybe they could get any of the human females to talk.
"What the hell?" Lerajie exclaimed.
Eligor peeked in the door. The women were huddled near the doorway, and did not hiss or try to pelt them with turds the way they usually did. At the far end of the dormitory, in the corner the females had designated their unofficial 'potty place,' lay a badly injured Sata'anic male, bleeding and unconscious. He had the look about him of someone who had been tortured.
"That's…"
"None of our business," Eligor said. The usual stench of excrement was absent from that corner. He could not help but grin. One of his shipmates had figured out a way to get the women to stop shitting in their food dishes and leaving them in that corner. What better way to encourage the stupid creatures to use the bathroom? He dragged Lerajie out of the room and shut the door.
Lerajie's mouth gaped like one of the frog-like Delphinium soldiers, opening and shutting as though catching a fly.
"Can you think of a more humiliating way to break a lizard's resolve than to stick him in the potty area of a harem?"
Eligor shot Lerajie a pointed eyebrow, as though what they had seen was the most natural thing in the world. For the male-dominated Sata'anic culture, the only way they could humiliate the guy any further would be to force him to look like he buggered farm animals and then post his pictures all over the galactic internet. In fact, it was why Lucifer kept this harem under wraps. He didn't want people to know he was, in fact, buggering a questionably-sentient species in order to produce his own offspring.
"Eligor," a call came over his comms pin.
"Sir?" Eligor answered.
"Report to the Prime Minister's quarters immediately."
Lerajie eyed him curiously as he left to comply. Had Lucifer woken up? He got there just in time to see Pruflas and Furcas lead three unknown females out of Lucifer's room, their clothing ripped to shreds. All three of them bore the same dead-eyed look the other seventeen had worn after Lucifer had finished with them. Three of them? At once? How? When he'd last seen Lucifer, the man had been so badly injured he couldn't even stand! Much less perform.
Zepar came out, tucking something into his pocket.
"We need you to transport us to these coordinates," Zepar handed him a smart tablet already pre-loaded with data.
"Yes, Sir," Eligor said. He didn't bother to ask, "what about Lerajie." His sidekick had been skirting the edge of trouble for quite some time. The only reason Lerajie hadn't been 'disappeared' along with the other troublemakers was because Eligor always managed to rein him in just shy of pissing Zepar off. If they got rid of Lerajie, instinctively Zepar knew they'd need to get rid of him as well, and he was the most reliable man they had. He trudged down to the launch bay to prepare Lucifer's real shuttle, the one that didn't smell like something had crawled into the induction ports and died, and warmed up the engines, noting the coordinates were relatively close. This flight would be a short little solar-system hop.
He glanced out of the shuttle and had to blink. Lucifer strutted across the launch bay in full 'I'm your rock star of a Prime Minister' mode, giving the men a victory 'V.' They cheered as he moved through them, reassuring them that now that he'd engineered his little coup d'état, soon he'd find Earth and get them their own females. That wasn't what made Eligor's mouth drop, though. He knew damned well Zepar was injecting him full of amphetamines or something to make him perky when the guy needed sleep. No. Sprouting out of Lucifer's back, still not grown out to full plumage, but pin-feathered like a porcupine, lay two wings full of emerging, snowy white feathers.
Eligor decided maybe it was best if he didn't look Lucifer in the eye. He suspected the guy could read his thoughts, or at least project his thoughts into somebody else's mind. The less he spoke, the better. He emptied out his mind of all the questions he wanted to ask, such as 'how the fuck did you just sprout two brand-new wings?' and filled his mind with the mundane things expected of a grunt like him. He followed the coordinates to a Sata'an luxury vessel. He recognized it immediately.
Ba'al Zebub.
He piloted the shuttle into the Tsalmaveth to land. For some reason Zepar wanted a third goon along to run interference. The lizards frisked him and snagged his pulse rifle, but they missed the knife he always kept in his boot.
He trailed behind Lucifer, avoiding eye contact and trying to keep his thoughts quiet as he stared at the back of those downy visages. A prosthesis? Had Zepar glued fake feathers onto his wings so Ba'al Zebub would not know how badly Lucifer had been injured? No. Why glue pin feathers to your charred wings when plain white feathers would have been so much easier to obtain? Even on the ride over here Eligor could swear the feathers had puffed out, the pennaceous barbs beginning to open up into their full width.
Eligor knew the drill. Triangulation. Furcas and Pruflas would protect Lucifer's person. He would hang back and remain inconspicuous by the door so they could blast their way out if the shit hit the fan. Most people could juggle one or even two threats in their mind simultaneously, but once you added a third shooter, it was more bodies with guns than any but a highly-trained soldier could keep track of. It was what Shemijaza had trained him to do before the man had gotten himself killed.
"Lord Zebub," Lucifer greeted his Sata'anic counterpart in the Sata'anic language, his body moving with a level of authority even the Emperor himself had never been able to fully emulate. "Thank you so much for agreeing to meet us."
Eligor emptied out his brain and opened his eyes. Don't think. Just observe. Store the information in your gut. It was another trait Shemijaza had ordered he learn, just before Tyre had been destroyed with a planet-killer. The portly lizard wore his usual garish finery, but he was twitchy, his long forked tongue tasting the air more than usual and, on one occasion, nervously flicked it across the top of his eyelids, a Sata'anic gesture of self-comfort. The lizard held out one clawed hand to greet Lucifer with an Alliance handshake.
"Mister Prime Minister," Ba'al Zebub grinned, exposing his lizard's fangs. "Or perhaps I should address you as Your Majesty? I hear congratulations are in order." His dewlap, which was usually a deep scarlet color, had faded to a paler pink, a physiological symptom of stress. "To what do I owe the honor of a state visit?"
"Shay'tan has issued a warrant for your arrest."
Lucifer moved with an almost serpentine grace, every body movement exaggerated as though a much bigger man moved within the ship. Ba'al Zebub must have sensed it, too, because the lizard instinctively took a step backwards.
"We both know what happens to creatures that have fallen from the old dragon's grace."
Ba'al Zebub's jowls turned a sickly pale green, but it did not appear this information came to him as a surprise.
"This ship sits in the Tokoloshe side of the border," Ba'al Zebub said. "King Barabas and I are on companionable terms. He has offered me sanctuary in exchange for certain … information."
"Do you truly trust the word of a can
nibal?" Lucifer asked. He touched Ba'al Zebub's chin, not the move of one sovereign to another, but a master toying with a slave he could not decide whether he wished to beat … or condemn to death … just to test the sharpness of his favorite sword.
Ba'al Zebub gulped. "I hoped perhaps you might make a better offer?" He fiddled with the bejeweled cuff of his robe.
Lucifer smiled, not that fake warm smile he shared with his fellow Alliance citizens, but the one that made you feel as though you were a mouse staring up at a serpent that was about to eat you for lunch. Eligor had seen the Prime Minister act like this on occasion, but now that he had emptied out his mind to tally body movements, he noted how unlike the good twin this version of Lucifer behaved. If Eligor didn't know any better, he would swear he stared at Lucifer's father. His real father. Shemijaza. The way the man had acted until he'd gotten all weird on them and wrecked his kingdom on a gamble he could go head-to-head against the Eternal Emperor to get back his son.
Eligor noted Zepar was silent, the obsequious servant who followed Lucifer's lead and not the puppet-master Eligor knew him to be. That part of his gut which stored information noted the shift in power dynamics.
"I already have the coordinates I seek," Lucifer leaned forward to whisper those words into Ba'al Zebub's ear as though he were whispering endearments to a lover. "We intercepted your shipment before your allies the Tokoloshe did. Didn't they tell you?"
Ba'al Zebub blanched further. Eligor's eyes met the gold-green eyes of the two Sata'anic guards that had been positioned to keep an eye on him. These men were scared shitless. Ba'al Zebub's number was up. They all knew what Shay'tan would do to any man unfortunate enough to be associated with a traitor. They were hoping for a better offer even more than Ba'al Zebub was.
"Then I have nothing to offer you," Ba'al Zebub said.
"But you do," Lucifer gave the lizard man a feral grin. He stroked Ba'al Zebub's cheek and gave a long, exaggerated sniff, as though he could smell his fear, savored the scent, and then slowly exhaled. "A little bird told me someone hacked into Shay'tan's computers and executed a command to erase the coordinates of Earth and all information about the shipments of certain goods to locations all over the galaxy. In fact, that same little bird told me Shay'tan had the wrong coordinates for Earth all along. Clever lizard. To prepare so thoroughly for the day your emperor might catch on to your off-books efforts to sustain a dead empire."
"The Third Empire still lives," Ba'al Zebub stepped back, his dorsal crest rearing in pride even though he knew he was a dead man. The soldiers positioned around the room, two on each one of them, flexed their claws towards their weapons, their dorsal crests rearing as they prepared to jump into a firefight at the slightest provocation.
"You once served my father," Lucifer circled around his former equal, now brought low. "Why not now serve me?"
"An abomination!" Ba'al Zebub hissed. "To hand over power to a son he had never met and throw everything we had worked so hard to build for a chance to get you back! It was all that woman's fault! Your mother!"
Lucifer leaned forward and spoke something in the deposed Sata'an leader's ear-hole.
"Oblitus es tuam verum dominum sic tam cito, parum lacerta?"
The unknown language was whispered so low Eligor almost couldn't hear it, but the air reverberated with a sensation akin to standing too close to a microwave oven whose shielding had gone flooey, the heat rising in the room with every word Lucifer spoke. Ba'al Zebub threw himself to his knees and bowed.
"Master!"
"That's more like it," Lucifer sniffed the air, his face moving into an exquisite expression a man might get upon tasting a decadent treat … or achieving an orgasm. He closed his eyes and savored his power over this lizard who had once been Shay'tan's second-in-command, then touched his hand upon Ba'al Zebub's bowed head as though he were dispensing absolution.
"Now … we will go to this planet you have found … this weakness that could be the breaking point of two empires … and we will protect it from either empire taking control until we figure out what we want to do with it. Does this plan meet with your favor, little lizard?"
"Yes, Master," Ba'al Zebub trembled.
Lucifer touched Ba'al Zebub's shoulder as though knighting him in an ancient fealty ceremony. "Arise, loyal friend. We go to rendezvous with your armada and take control of Earth."
Eligor looked at the two lizards assigned to guard him. The two lizards looked back, their tongues flicking the air as they tried to figure out what in Hades was going on. He could almost see the thought that muddled its way through those lizard brains, the same thought going through his brain right now.
What the fuck had Lucifer said to the man to get him to grovel?
Ba'al Zebub rose, trembling with what could only be described as religious fervor. "It will take two weeks to travel there, Master. Shay'tan's warships stand between us. They have me cornered."
"Not my ship," Lucifer smiled. "We shall be there within moments once we get your men to safety."
"To … safety?" Ba'al Zebub scratched his head.
"So Shay'tan doesn't blow them up when he gets here to destroy your ship," Lucifer spoke so sweetly the words came out almost a purr. "You need to move it just a half light year over the border, next to my ship, so that when he arrives it sits in Alliance Territory."
"All my wealth is hidden on this ship!" Ba'al Zebub protested. "It was bad enough I had to abandon my wives!"
"Then you'd better order your men to move quickly," Lucifer tapped his finger on his lip as though he were thinking. "So you don't lose your best men and treasure when the old dragon makes an example of you." He switched into Galactic Standard so the Sata'anic guards couldn't understand what he said. "The SRN Chinosia watched my shuttle travel into this asteroid field."
"M-m-master," Ba'al Zebub whispered. "Shay'tan will not let this ship cross the Alliance border."
Lucifer switched back to the Sata'anic language and spoke more loudly. "I will broadcast a message to Parliament asking for amnesty for you and your entire crew. Why not come back to my ship with a few of your guards, and perhaps an offer of tribute to grease the wheels, so I can make it official?"
"Shay'tan will know he is walking into a trap," Ba'al Zebub trembled as he whispered.
"Shay'tan doesn't like losing," Lucifer gave him a feral grin. "Besides, I need a diversion to keep the Destroyer amused lest he wrests control of the planet from all empires and makes a present of it to his lovely wife. Why not make it because he saved your ship so he could get the coordinates of Earth?"
So Lucifer was aware all along that Abaddon's wife was smarter than the ones he kept? And was just yanking his chain when he'd asked him about it while they'd transported him back to the Prince of Tyre in the shuttle? No. That didn't make sense. He'd seen the look on Lucifer's face when instead of standing docilely for the Speaker of the Commons to examine her and declare her human, the woman had started advocating for the rights of her own species. Lucifer had been dumbstruck.
Maybe he had a split personality?
Yes. That would explain a lot. Somehow Zepar had figured out how to manipulate some wound in Lucifer's psyche and get him to act one way in front of the Emperor, another way when he wanted Lucifer to act without remorse. Yes. That was it. The dude was cracked just like his real father had been. The scavengers had moved in to snuffle up the breadcrumbs because who the hell was going to hold accountable a mad emperor?
A shadow stood in front of him. Oh. Shit! He'd been allowing himself to think instead of just observing what was going on and thinking about it later, once he was away from potentially-psychic, multiple-personality-disordered mad despots intent on galactic domination.
"Is something wrong, Eligor?" Zepar asked, not the obsequious assistant when ordering him around, only when around the evil twin version of Lucifer.
'Circle check. Fire up the shuttle engines. Make sure the lizards didn't stick any grenades down the induction ports. Compute how much extr
a thrust is needed to compensate for the added weight of Ba'al Zebub and his treasure…'
"I apologize, Sir," Eligor said, forcing the inane thoughts to run in the background of his brain the way he'd been taught, old training he'd thought curious when Shemijaza had suddenly ordered him to learn it when he'd sent the Prince of Tyre to retrieve his son. Oh-thank-the-gods he knew how to do it now. "How many shuttle runs do you think it will take to move all of the men over from this ship to our own?"
"Just one," Zepar spoke softly in Galactic Standard so the two lizard men, even if they could translate, would not be able to overhear. "Ba'al Zebub and his two most trusted men. The rest will fly the Tsalmaveth over the Alliance border to safety."
A bad feeling settled into Eligor's gut. He'd heard what Lucifer had said.
"And what about these men?" he asked, understanding what he was being asked to do.
"Take them back to help you load the shuttle," Zepar said. "And then do what you must to make sure we will all fit in a single load. Shay'tan monitors our every move."
Eligor forced himself not to blink. "Yes, Sir."
He did as he was asked, followed Ba'al Zebub's men back to his shuttle, made sure all the boxes of treasure were loaded onto the cargo hold until it could not hold another box, and then just as the men relaxed, relieved they were about to be transported beyond the range of Shay'tan's revenge, Eligor did what he had been trained to do, the reason Zepar trusted him to do what he was told and nothing more. He moved to a hidden compartment kept ready for just such an occasion.
"I'm sorry guys, this isn't personal," Eligor said without emotion. He pulled the trigger on the two pulse rifles he'd pulled out and vaporized the backs of the two lizard men's heads before they had a chance to turn around to see they were about to die. The bodies slumped to the ground, grey brain-matter splattered all over Ba'al Zebub's treasure in bloody clumps that looked like curdled cheese.
Feeling sick, he dragged out the two bodies and stuffed them into the now-empty compartment where Ba'al Zebub's treasure had originally been stored; punching in the key-code to lock it so no other lizard would be tipped off the purported 'amnesty' was just a ruse.
Sword of the Gods: Prince of Tyre (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 80
