“Where are you going?” Flax asked.
He tapped the control, opening the closet door.
“What do you think?” he said.
“If IDEA can track you in the middle of nowhere, I’m sure they’ll find you in a closet.”
Sounds of explosions and blaster fire filtered through the walls and floor. Flax considered leaving, perhaps to find someone from the crew, but Ruggles objected.
“Stay with me!” he pleaded.
“That’s sweet, Walter, but I don’t plan on spending my last moments with you.”
The door to the corridor slid open and a small, green-skinned man stood in the threshold. His head was too big for his body and his nose and ears were too big for his head. Everyone stared at each other until Flax jumped up from her chair, crossing the tiny cabin in a single step. She lunged at the man, punching him on the nose and knocking him down.
The little green man cupped his nose as blood poured from between his fingers. He was also screaming.
Flax touched the controls, closing the door.
“What is that?” Ruggles asked.
“Celadon I think,” Flax replied. “Nasty little bastards...”
Finding some electrical cord, Flax tied the Celadon’s hands and feet. Mostly to stop the noise he was making, she also tied a piece of cloth torn from the bed sheet around his mouth. The blood was already starting to dry around his nose.
“Now what?” Ruggles asked.
“Help me stick him in the closet.”
“But I was going to hide in there...”
“Sorry, hero,” she replied snidely. “We’re going to take his gun and find a lifeboat or something. We don’t want to get caught by these guys.”
“Do you think they work for IDEA?”
“No!”
Although they left the cabin together, Flax and Ruggles quickly became separated amid the confusion of Celadon pirates and panicking passengers. In the end, Flax was captured, disarmed, and hauled aboard a corsair starship. Now, crouched in the hold, she felt both relieved that Ruggles managed not to die, and irritated that she had not done better than him. With a sarcastic smile, she realized they were literally in the same boat.
With the first name of Bortok and the last name The Enslaver, the leader of the Ougluks had a reputation for brutality that served him well. Six feet six inches tall, with wide, muscular shoulders, he intimidated nearly everyone he met. Even so, in his private quarters inside the Ougluk base on an abandoned asteroid, Bortok considered himself more of an art lover.
On the wall, a large computer monitor hung in a gilded frame like an expensive painting. Images of famous artworks cycled across the screen as Bortok reclined in a comfortable armchair.
The first picture, Inevitable Conclusion by the Magna artist Zhug-Doja, showed a city burning against a blackened sky. The next few paintings were Gordian still lifes featuring, for the most part, casks of beer surrounded by sausages. While Bortok appreciated the subject matter, he found it visually uninteresting. However, these were still a far cry better than anything the Dahl had produced. With their idyllic landscapes of pink blossoms and wispy waterfalls, they made the Enslaver want to choke himself.
The next piece was by a human painter named Goya, titled Saturn Devouring His Son.
Say what you will about humans, Bortok thought, they know how to make great art.
Hearing a chime, he watched the painting on the screen dissolve into the face of a man who looked similar to a Dahl except for his bright, vermilion skin and dark red hair.
“What do you want, Cirion?” Bortok asked.
The Sarkan, or Red Dahl as they were also called, stared from the screen with a sour expression.
“The Celadons have arrived with their latest shipment,” Cirion replied.
“Get them ready for me. I’ll be there in a bit...”
Before the connection blinked out, Bortok caught a glimpse of Cirion rolling his eyes.
The Red Dahl may love their psionics, Bortok thought, but it’s hard to cast a spell with a broken neck...
After getting dressed, the Enslaver left his quarters and made his way through the tunnels carved from the surrounding asteroid. It had been a mining colony long ago before he had found it abandoned. Nobody knew where it was, except him and his men. Hidden among the other floating rocks in the otherwise uninhabited star system, it was the perfect hideout from the Imperial Navy.
Bortok walked into an open chamber with a high ceiling and a deep hole dug in the center. Two bare-chested Ougluks brawled in the pit, with only their fists as weapons. The Enslaver liked a little blood sport before seeing the newest meat the Celadons brought him. He hated those sniveling little pirates, but they did the dirty work for him. It was a good system.
Passing the pit and down another corridor, Bortok arrived at the hangar where a cargo ship was sitting on heavy struts. The bay door was already open and the captives were lined up in orderly rows.
Bortok didn’t like what he saw.
Sylvia Flax stood in a line with other passengers from the Jewel of Amann. In the row behind her, she heard Walter Ruggles mumble about IDEA agents. She wasn’t sure if he was certifiably insane or merely an imbecile. All she knew was, of her worst assignments, this was in the top five.
Besides the Celadons, Flax recognized the other brutes as Ougluks and remembered their reputation as slave peddlers. She had no idea where they had taken her, but when one of the Ougluks trudged in her direction, she knew she was in trouble.
He shouted at the Celadon corsairs in another language, motioning angrily at the humans. The main Celadon shrugged, which Flax took to mean “you get what you get.” The big Ougluk boxed the ears of the Celadon, who fell moaning to the ground. The other Celadons jumped and chattered amongst themselves. The Ougluk shouted a few more words, curses most likely, before turning to the captives.
“I’m Bortok the Enslaver!” he shouted in standard Imperial. “Welcome to the rest of your life!”
He chuckled at his own joke.
That’s never a good sign, Flax thought.
“Of course, I can’t say how long that’s going to be...” he went on.
Called it.
“Normally my Celadon brothers bring us people I can use,” Bortok said. “Slaves need to be young, able folk. People I can sell to the highest bidder! I don’t know what hole they dragged this miserable lot from, but you wouldn’t fetch a pittance. You’re a waste of my time, that’s what you are!”
“See here!” someone said behind her.
Ah, crap, Flax thought.
The Ougluk’s face, which was previously contorted into a scowl, flattened into a curious expression of interest.
“What’s your name, sir?” he said with surprising respect.
“Walter Ruggles of IDEA Furniture.”
“IDEA, huh?” Bortok said, looking worried. “I certainly don’t want trouble with them.”
“Well, I should hope not!” Ruggles replied, stepping forward. “We’re nobody to trifle with, I assure you!”
The previously towering slave trader slouched as Ruggles approached.
“This has all been a terrible misunderstanding...” Ougluk said meekly.
“Really?” Ruggles replied.
Rising to his full height, Bortok straightened and slapped Ruggles’ face, knocking the frail man to the ground and sending his glasses through the air, landing at Flax’s feet.
“...that I give a shit who you work for!” he finished.
Curled in a fetal position, Ruggles whimpered quietly in a heap.
Flax wanted to do something. Her right foot edged forward just an inch, but she stopped herself before anyone could notice. There was no point sticking her neck out if they’d just end up dead.
Bortok leaned over and grabbed Ruggles by the collar and began dragging him the way the Ougluk had originally entered. Over his shoulder, he shouted at the Celadons.
“Bring the rest!”
On the monitor, th
e image of Bortok blinked off. Cirion groaned and turned away from the screen. Sometimes, dealing with these barbarians was just too much.
On this isolated rock in space, Cirion’s office was his only sanctuary. His quarters were shared with Bortok’s brutish subordinates, but here at least he had privacy. With the door shut, he could almost imagine being back home, far from these low-bred creatures, surrounded by his own kind. The Red Dahl were mental titans compared to the Ougluks and their stunted half-cousins, the Celadons. Laying back in a chair, Cirion stretched out his arm and, focusing his mind, manifested a twirling sphere of energy in the palm of his hand.
This is power, he thought. The power to make something from nothing.
He sneered, thinking about his own cousins, the Dahl. They once had everything, their fingers reaching throughout the galaxy. Then they threw it all away, turning inward and leaving their far-flung holdings to rot. The farthest outposts, isolated and forgotten, had to fend for themselves. It was there that the Sarkan evolved into a new people with their own beliefs and skin color.
Now look at the original Dahl, Cirion thought. They grovel at the feet of the humans, complacent in the spread of the human plague across the stars. Only the Sarkan see the true path...
The communicator in his ear chimed.
“Yes, sir?” he said.
A deep voice replied, “Come here at once.”
“Understood.”
Cirion collected his datapad and left his office, making sure the door was securely locked behind him. Through a passageway cut unevenly through the asteroid, he wound his way to a large chamber used as an assembly hall. Long tables ran the length of the room, leading, on the other end, to a raised platform. Standing on the stage, a Magna watched him with eyes blazing red.
Cirion’s chest tightened.
“Ipak-Bog,” the Sarkan said. “What can I do for you?”
The Magna was two feet taller than Cirion, wearing a kilt-like garment stretching to the floor. From the belt up, he was bare-skinned, revealing a massive, muscular body along with gray, ram-like horns. His voice rolled over the Red Dahl like thunder across a plain.
“What is your report?” Bog asked, but not as a question.
Shaking slightly, Cirion glanced at his datapad.
“A new shipment has arrived, sir,” he said, almost whispering.
“And?”
“The quality seems... substandard.”
Bog’s eyes simmered, focusing directly on the slender-framed Sarkan.
“Disappointing,” he said after a pause.
“But...” Cirion went on hurriedly, “there is something you might like.”
“Go on.”
“The Celadons downloaded the ship’s passenger list and there appears to be a VIP aboard, a human named Sylvia Flax.”
Gradually, like a glacier working its way across a continent, Bog’s mouth curled into a smile, or at least as close to one as Cirion had ever seen on the Magna’s face.
The Celadons gathered the captives together and herded them through an arched tunnel into a main room where several Ougluks were assembled around a hole in the ground. They made room for the prisoners to get a view into the pit. Peering over the edge, Flax saw one of her burly captors, barely clothed and covered in horrific scars, standing below. The Ougluk was dirty and smeared with blood, but probably not his own.
Bortok lugged Ruggles to the lip of the pit, yanking him to his feet.
“I can’t see what’s happening...” Ruggles sputtered.
“Allow me to explain,” Bortok replied, releasing his grip. “Down there, which I imagine is a fuzzy blob to you, is one of our less genteel enslavers. Frankly, he doesn’t have the temperament to be a slave trader. He prefers smashing things.”
“He sounds horrible,” Ruggles said.
“Indeed he is!” Borok admitted. “Why don’t you say hello?”
Bortok shoved Ruggles in the back, sending him like a rag doll into the pit. His arms and legs flailing in midair, the furniture salesman landed in a lump of poorly tailored clothes at the bottom.
Flax heard a muffled groan.
“Get up, human!” Bortok shouted. “There’s no sport in just lying there!”
“Stay down!” Flax said without thinking.
“Shut up!” Bortok ordered, swiping the empty air in her direction. “No interference from anyone!”
Ruggles pulled himself to his knees and elbows, his head still resting on the dirt. He coughed, making a cloud of dust appear around him. With more effort, he got to his feet on wobbly legs.
“I’m blind without my glasses,” he said.
“Look for the blurry mass of green in front of you,” Bortok replied. “When he gets close enough to see, he’s probably too close...”
“What?”
The Ougluk in the pit charged at Ruggles, who looked like an animal caught in the headlights of a truck. The brawler wrapped his thick arms around him as Ruggles gasped while the air in his lungs was squeezed out. His legs dangling, he managed to kick the Ougluk in the crotch. The brute dropped him, allowing Ruggles to scurry away to the far side of the hole.
“Low blows are against the rules, Mr. Ruggles,” Bortok said. “Just kidding. There are no rules!”
In the pit, the Ougluk roared in anger and pain. Pounding his chest, he recovered quickly and charged toward Ruggles on the other end. The human didn’t immediately react, perhaps not seeing the green behemoth rushing toward him. At the last second, his eyes suddenly wide, Ruggles darted out of the way with a loud, throaty shriek. He took refuge back where he had started, just below where Flax was standing.
“Isn’t this fun?” Bortok asked with a wide grin. “Wait till he gets an arm torn off. That’s always entertaining!”
His hair soaked in sweat, Ruggles squinted in the dark pit. On the other side, the Ougluk took his time, clearly recognizing his advantage. Flax watched them, knowing how this was going to end. It made her sick.
“Son of a bitch,” she said and jumped into the hole.
Landing next to Ruggles, she shoved the glasses into his hands.
“Put these on, you idiot,” she said.
“Who? What?” Ruggles stammered.
“Put ‘em on!”
Obeying, he winced once he got a good look at the Ougluk sharing the pit with him.
“Good god!” he said.
“I distinctly said no interference!” Bortok raged, shaking his fist. “Was I talking to myself?”
Flax looked up.
“If you kill him,” she said, “you’ll have to kill me too!”
Bortok took a breath, calming himself.
“I see,” he said. “As you humans say, that would be like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Even an Ougluk wouldn’t do that.”
Flax nodded and smiled, surprised that it actually worked.
“That was sarcasm!” Bortok said. “Kill them both!”
“Stop!” someone ordered.
Bortok, Flax, and everyone else turned their heads. Next to the pit, a Magna stood beside a Red Dahl, tiny in comparison.
“What is this nonsense, Bortok?” the Magna said.
“Ipak-Bog,” the Ougluk replied, staring at the ground. “We were just trying to have a good time...”
“By wasting livestock?” Bog asked. “I was unaware the needs of my home world meant so little to you.”
“No! It was just a little fun.”
“Get them out of there!”
Chapter Fifteen
Judicator Busa-Gul arrived at the Ministry of External Security with the information he had gathered while visiting the Talion Republic. The offices of the ministry were located on the Magna home world Diavol, in the Consilium, a dark pyramid overlooking the city of Oras Dracilor. The Consilium was, for all practical matters, the center of the Magna Supremacy government. Those who worked in the building also lived there and, for the remainder of their lives, never left.
Gul, in his golden kilt and spiraling horns, wai
ted in the lobby, a room devoid of furnishings except for a slab of basalt serving as a bench. The walls and floor were black as slate, fixtures in the corners providing the barest minimum of light.
After many minutes, a pair of heavy doors opened and Gul rose from the bench and walked inside. Once the doors shut behind him, Gul became aware of a desk on the far side of another largely empty room. Like the lobby, the walls and floor were dark stone. Above the desk, the Magna emblem was carved into the rock. It was a crescent lying on its side with the points sticking up. Cradled between the points was a circle and, below the crescent to the left and right, two more circles. The whole of the emblem was encrusted with rubies, the red contrasting against the black of the walls.
“Come forward and report,” a voice said from behind the desk. In a high-backed leather chair, a Magna sat with horns weathered by age. Around his neck, he wore a gold crescent hanging by a chain.
Gul crossed the long chamber until he was a few feet from the desk which he realized was cut from basalt like the bench outside.
“Minister,” he said. “I have the information as requested.”
“What did you find?” the minister replied.
“The K’thonian raiders have continued to plague the Tals, especially along the outskirts of their republic.”
“That’s not unusual.”
“Correct, but the frequency and nature of the raids have changed,” Gul said.
“Nature? What do you mean?”
“In the past, the K’thonian attacks seemed random, even malicious. The raiders appeared without warning and killed and destroyed whatever they could find. Recently, the raids have increased markedly and the Tals have noticed something peculiar. Instead of merely razing settlements, the K’thonians seem to be looking for something specific.”
“Such as?”
“Books, Minister.”
Gul heard a deep chuckle come from the other side of the desk.
“You must be joking,” the minister said. “Those mindless savages aren’t the reading type!”
“No, indeed,” Gul replied. “In fact, I had an opportunity to study a K’thonian specimen — dead of course — and found the corpse surprisingly primitive. However, upon closer examination, I discovered the body contained several unused organs, remnants of an earlier time evolutionarily speaking. Also, the fact that the K’thonians use psionics suggests they were not always so backward.”
Imperium Chronicles Box Set Page 44
