“We’ll be safe here until morning,” said Kreegah. “Care for something to eat?”
He bent down, grabbed an unidentifiable slab of raw meat, and presented it to us.
“I can’t eat Terran foodstuffs,” I replied.
“Oh, yes. I forgot about that. Perhaps the Venusians would like a piece?” He tore strips of flesh and offered it to each. They accepted.
Snarg eagerly swayed and clicked at Kreegah. He laughed and threw her a few pounds of rotting flesh. Squealing with delight, she skittered over to a corner to tear into her dinner.
Zala and her soldiers removed cylindrical devices from their belts. It hummed as they waved it under the meat.
“What’s that for?” asked Kreegah.
“It cooks and purifies,” she said.
He gave her a curious look. “Why would you do that?”
“To avoid contaminants, parasites, and the like.”
Kreegah took a big bite of his raw dinner. “But the parasites are the best part.”
Snarg chirped her agreement as she crunched into tasty bone.
“Venusian biology is…delicate,” I said.
He nodded, chewing and wiping his greasy hands on his thighs.
“Where did you learn to speak?” she asked. “Did Emperor teach you?”
“The computer taught me.”
He pushed a button. It took several presses to get a response. The only working screen crackled to life, the lighting went blue, and a klaxon sounded.
“Attention,” said a static-filled voice. “Attention. Unauthorized life-forms identified aboard bridge. Unauthorized—”
Something shorted, and the blue switched off. The klaxon attempted to continue, but only came out as a muted bass thumping.
Kreegah pushed the button several more times. The blue came back. The computer sounded its warning.
“Intrusion acknowledged,” he said. “Authorized visitors.” This satisfied the computer. It returned the lighting to normal once again, and the bass thump disappeared.
“Hello,” said the computer.
After a few moments, when we didn’t reply, it repeated itself.
“Hello.”
“Greetings,” said Zala, taking pity on the underpowered device.
“Hello.” The computer’s voice squealed. Zala covered her ears.
“You remember Emperor and Snarg, don’t you, computer?” asked Kreegah.
Deep in its core, the computer processed the question. Wisps of smoke rose from its cracked screen.
“Emperor Mollusk and Ultrapede Snarg identified. Hello, Emperor.”
“Hello, computer,” I replied.
The machine shrieked an ultrasonic greeting to Snarg, who stopped eating just long enough to bat her milky yellow eyes and shriek back.
“I am Zala of the—”
“Please designate unidentified life-form.”
Zala tried again, but the computer cut her off, demanding designation.
“I’m trying to supply designation,” said Zala. “If you’d just let me—”
“Designation, please.”
“Zala of the Venusian—”
“Designation, please.”
“Zala of—”
“Designation, please.”
“You stupid malfunctioning piece of technology—”
“Unacceptable levels of hostility detected. Deploying pacification.”
A panel in a wall opened very, very slowly. By all rights, it shouldn’t have worked at all, but it was able, after several seconds of determined creaking, squealing, and cracking, to part and allow a pair of hovering robotic security devices to list clumsily into the bridge. One of the robots only made it a few feet before it popped, caught fire, and fell to the floor. The second managed to reach Zala. It extended a small prod and jabbed her in the shoulder. There was a tiny spark, but not enough to warrant a response from a hardened Venusian warrior.
“Unidentified hostile life-form pacified,” said the computer with just a hint of self-satisfaction.
The robot then chugged its way back to the panel, where it quietly deactivated. The panel creaked and groaned its way closed.
“Designation, please.”
Zala sighed.
The computer made a grinding, whirring noise.
“Designation assigned: Zala.”
The computer snapped off.
“She’s not what she used to be,” explained Kreegah, “but she was functional enough to give me an education.”
“Then you know where you come from?” asked Zala. “Where your home is.”
“This is my home. Jupiter is a planet I don’t even remember.”
“And you don’t want to go back there?”
“Why would I?”
“But it’s your origin, where you belong.”
“I wasn’t raised on Jupiter. I only know what the computer has shown me about it. But I would be a savage on that world, a thing to be pitied and mocked. Here, I’m happy. I don’t belong on Jupiter.”
“But don’t you get lonely?”
“I’m too busy surviving to be lonely,” he replied. “And I have the computer and my adopted people to keep me company. Why would I need anything else?”
“But there’s more to life than surviving,” she said.
“Like what?” asked Kreegah, genuinely interested.
“Like honor and service.”
“I’m unaware of these concepts. The computer has never mentioned them, and they’ve never come up among my people.”
“Because your people are uncivilized beasts.”
She paused.
“I’m sorry. That was disrespectful.”
“Was it? You were just saying what you were thinking. Is that considered rude? But isn’t that honest? Is honesty less important than respect? Is deceit a part of honor?”
“No, but I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“But I’m not offended. I’m more troubled by lies than by truth. In the tribe, if one member doesn’t like another, they say so. Then they fight until the matter is settled. To the death, if necessary. Are you saying you don’t like me? Though I’m not offended, I will fight you if that’s what your honor demands.”
She said, “No, you misunderstand me.”
Kreegah nodded. “I see. If I’ve offended you, then should we fight?”
“I don’t want to fight you.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand honor then. It seems…ridiculous, a way to be offended by others and to offend others.”
“No, it’s not like that. It’s complicated.”
“I’ve heard this before,” said Kreegah. “It seems to be a word people use to avoid explaining something. Perhaps I’m too uncivilized to be offended.”
Zala hesitated. They weren’t easy questions, and I doubt she’d thought much about them in the past. Venusian warrior society wasn’t given to philosophy.
“I wouldn’t know about that,” I replied. “I’m civilized and don’t understand it myself.”
She snorted, mumbling to herself.
“Don’t mind her. She thinks I’m a criminal.”
“You are a criminal.”
“Depends on who you ask,” I said.
“Who could I ask that would not consider you a dangerous menace?”
“The Terrans like me.”
“Only because you’ve brainwashed them.”
“A technicality. It’s not as if I’m imposing my will on them anymore. They’re free to go about their lives.”
“You can’t just decide not to be a criminal, Emperor,” said Zala.
“Why not?”
“Because that’s…because…” Her gray brow furrowed, and she frowned. “Because it doesn’t work that way. You have to pay for your crimes.”
“Even if I’m no longer doing them?”
“You can’t just wave a tentacle and pardon yourself from all your past sins.”
“Sure, I can. As a matter of fact, that was one of my last acts as
Supreme Warlord. Remind me to show you the document sometime. It’s on official government stationery and everything.”
Zala sighed.
The ship rumbled as a tremor shook the island.
“The island has been shaking at night. Ever since the other one came,” said Kreegah. “My people fear it. They say the new tribe has enraged the volcano. But now that you’re here, Emperor, I can tell them not to fear.”
“What’s this other one look like?” Zala asked.
“He’s small. Like Emperor. And uses robots and creatures to do his work.”
“A Neptunon?”
Kreegah shook his head. “No, I’ve only seen him from far, but he isn’t like Emperor.”
The ground quaked.
“This shouldn’t be happening,” I said. “Not unless someone has tampered with the stabilizing unit. But without the stabilizer, the anomaly could collapse into a singularity that could endanger this planet and eventually the whole system.”
“Endanger how?”
“Black hole how,” I replied.
“That’s bad.”
“Very bad. We should probably do something about it,” I agreed. “Well, good night.”
“Are you mad, Emperor? You’re going to sleep now?”
“No, I’m not going to sleep. I don’t need to. But you really should because we have a big day tomorrow, and you’ll be no good to me tired. In the meantime, I’ll be studying this.”
I held up the node I’d taken from the jelligantic that I’d been storing in an exo compartment.
“What’s that?” asked Zala.
“Possibly something important,” I said. “Or just something I think is important. I’ll know after I take a closer look.”
The screws holding the blackened, half-melted node together were melted and blackened. I used a laser to carefully cut it open. The internal circuitry was damaged, but oddly, it didn’t look like they’d ever been switched on in the first place. I began disassembling the unit, laying out the parts on a clear spot on a console.
I gave Snarg the ultrasonic command to rest. She found a dark corner to curl up in. Kreegah plopped into an old chair and was immediately asleep. He could sleep or wake on a moment’s notice. Such was the requirement of his life.
Zala, despite her protests, understood this too. An exhausted soldier was a liability, and she’d slept on her fair share of battlefields.
“I understand that it annoys you to be at the mercy of an inhospitable situation with only me to guide you,” I said. “But you’ll get used to it.”
She glowered. “I don’t take orders from you.”
“Don’t think of it as an order. Think of it as a helpful suggestion from someone who should be in charge by default. Unless you think you know the best way to avoid a space-time disaster from consuming the galaxy. In which case, you’re more than welcome to rush headlong into the night by yourself.”
“I thought you said the threat was limited to the system.”
“Did I? Let’s hope so. I’ll keep my tentacles looped.”
Zala shook her head. “You enjoy tormenting me, don’t you?”
“I’ll admit to some small pleasure.”
Dinosaur Island quaked its approval.
Exterminating Topeka
Mutant insects were eating Kansas.
Again.
My saucer and its fleet of automated fighters waged war with the giant creatures. Huge radioactive hornets engaged in dogfights through the streets of Topeka while forty-foot fire ants belched flames, setting anything and everything ablaze.
It wasn’t as devastating as it might first appear. This was the fifth attack in as many weeks. The citizens of Topeka hadn’t moved back into their city after the second. Nor had they started repairs on the ruins. There wasn’t much left of the city to destroy at this point. Which meant that if I didn’t stop the insects here and now, they’d probably march on in search of more appealing hunting grounds. From there, they’d spread across the globe.
But the real danger of the bugs wasn’t in their ascendance to dominance, but in the radioactive waste left in their wake. It was even more difficult to contain than the insects, and if enough of it contaminated the water supply and air, the native Terran life-forms were due a painful death.
I’d rather not have my reign over Terra end with her as an unlivable wasteland. Though if the Terrans went extinct, they wouldn’t be around to hold it against me, and the rest of the system already considered me an irredeemable criminal. So it wasn’t as if I had to worry about damage to my reputation.
But it would’ve still been a lousy way to end my warlordship.
Several jumping spiders pounced on my saucer. I pushed a button and electrocuted them. A praying mantis snatched a fighter out of the air and devoured it in three bites. The ship self-destructed, blowing off the mantis’s head. I blasted the tide of fire ants, but there were more.
There were always more.
I couldn’t help but think myself somewhat responsible for keeping this doomsday from happening, and it probably had something to do with the fact that the bugs were an unintended consequence of my own entomological research. My design had been some genetic tweaking, the creation of a new breed of insect that could excrete a useful power source as a backup should the molluskotrenic ever fail. A simple splice of some Mercurial queen wasp genetic material in a few native species. A carefully controlled experiment until a few ants escaped into the wild.
I still didn’t know what caused the gigantism. The Mercurial insects weren’t this large. But some of science’s best discoveries came from happy accidents. I was ever optimistic that this research could be salvaged. Though at the moment, I was more concerned with keeping it contained.
While my automated tanks and fighters waged their battle, I hovered over the city, scanning it block by block. There had to be a queen to this insect empire, a prime carrier to infect the other creatures. There always was. Every time before, I’d destroyed the queen and hoped that was the end of the problem. It had yet to take.
If it didn’t work this time, I’d have to vaporize the state.
My sensors pinged, detecting unusually high levels of radioactivity. It had to be the prime queen’s nest. My research suggested that she was likely to be a vast, virtually immobile creature whose sole function was to spit out the mutagenic contagion. The swarm would defend her to the death, but they were outgunned. And once the prime was gone, it would be easy to clean up the mess.
The nest was under a building barely standing. I toppled it with a blast and then used a tractor beam to clear away the rubble. The buzzing of the insects grew angrier. My defense forces kept them at bay while I dug deeper.
A sonic shriek rattled the air as a geyser of dust kicked up. Sensors went wild. A shadow blotted out the sky. The prime queen was seven times the size of my own craft. And she was unhappy.
She was also far from immobile. She was too massive to fly with her vestigial wings, but her three pairs of legs worked. A volley of rockets exploded against her natural armor plating, inflicting some minor wounds. She barfed up a ball of slime that I weaved under. It exploded against the ground with tremendous force. At least the energy source idea had proven viable.
She spit a stream of unstable mucus across a row of tanks, destroying them in a burst of flames. She hunched over. Orifices along her back sprayed the air with a hundred pellets. Bugs and fighters alike disintegrated under the indiscriminate attack. My saucer shields absorbed the brunt of the force, but they wouldn’t hold up to another.
The queen turned her attention toward me, the only thing still flying after her blitz. She scuttled forward with surprising speed, but I flew up and out of her reach. The enraged prime shrieked as she belched round after round. I dropped my payload of rockets and bombs on the creature, then burned out my pulsar and blaster cannons. The queen was wounded but showed no sign of falling.
Finally, I got the creature to spit straight up. Gravity did the rest. Her muc
us struck her between her multitude of eyes, and her head exploded. She stumbled through the city another three hours, rampaging blindly in the ruins, before succumbing to her injuries.
The Terrans already had banners and a parade at the ready as I set my saucer down outside the city limits. I stepped out to the sounds of much rejoicing. Reporters pushed microphones at me.
One asked, “Lord Mollusk, how does it feel to have saved the city of Topeka for the fifth time?”
“Perhaps saved isn’t the right word,” I replied.
“Nonetheless, the people of Terra are indebted to you once again. Surely, you must feel a sense of tremendous pride. Or are you simply too humble to realize how amazing you are?”
“I’ll get back to you on that.”
I approached the podium. A hushed awe fell over the crowd.
“That should do it, everyone,” I said. “I’d probably wait another week or two before starting any serious rebuilding. Just to be on the cautious side. Now if you’ll excuse me…”
My exo communicator beeped.
“Excuse me one moment. I need to take this.”
The voice on the other end said, “Lord Mollusk, we’ve lost China.”
“Define lost.”
“It’s not there anymore, sir.”
“Well, that’s no good, is it?” I said.
“No, sir. We thought you should know.”
“Yes, I’ll look into it. Mollusk out.”
“Hail Lord Mollusk!” shouted the voice in the speaker.
“Hail Mollusk,” I agreed quietly.
I waved good-bye to the crowd and boarded my saucer.
I did end up finding China, though getting it back from the transdimensional cat people who stole it was almost more trouble than it was worth.
Emperor Mollusk Versus The Sinister Brain Page 8
