The old tree was a true giant of the forest. Sandara ran around its trunk to search for a way in, and she discovered a narrow gap about two yards above ground, large enough to allow her to pass through. She grabbed its edges and jumped inside, landing on the metal floor of a strange dome. Since she was used to the quirks of the virtual world, she wasn’t at all surprised that the room turned out to be much larger on the inside than what the tree trunk would normally accommodate.
The hall’s walls were made of bark, pierced here and there to allow the starlight to reach inside. The ceiling was a huge concave screen of the galactic map, the rest of the room being the bridge of the Sigian destroyer! The cockpits, the distortion sphere, everything was there! Ugo and his virtual architects were busy stretching strange, luminescent threads between Uralia’s floating screens and the displays of the Sigian fighter cockpits—no doubt to drive the destroyer from that place.
Ugo’s screens were all red—AI architects from Firalia 9, Sandara noticed, worried. The color gave away another of his betrayals: Ugo had abused his position when he was the city’s jure to hide his secrets on Firalia 9, far from the prying eyes of Forbat and the other Ropolitans. Who knew what horrors he concealed there!
Ugo turned as soon as he heard the grah’s landing.
“How did you find me?” he exclaimed, surprised.
He looked around, spotting the shadow of a licant sneaking along a crack. Others were flying outside around the trees, playfully chasing one another through the star rays.
“You sent spies! I’m finally impressed,” he said mockingly. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have something to finish.”
“What are you doing here?” she snapped.
“That’s none of your concern! And I don’t remember inviting you in!” he replied with a sardonic grin.
He made a large hand sign, and the main hollow opened its rims wide. At the same time, the floor under Sandara’s feet extended outside the tree trunk, carrying her along. The floor swiftly retracted, and she fell to the ground, hitting another tree before reaching the grass.
Without looking the least affected by her uncle’s lack of manners, Sandara scrambled to her feet so quickly that she barely touched the ground. She ran back to the hollow, but the gap had narrowed its edges so much that it was now impossible to slip inside. Sandara dropped an exclamation of annoyance, accompanied by the monster’s derisive laughter.
She grabbed the tree and climbed nimbly on its trunk, hoping to find a crack large enough to sneak in. But all were too small for that. However, she had no intention of giving up that easily; back on the ground, she whistled for her sphere.
“Wow, my little niece called her portal?” she heard Ugo say with a chuckle. “Let’s see what she can do better than a five-year-old kid.”
Without bothering to answer, Sandara stepped inside the portal. Soon, she came out again, carrying a bulky tubular container in her arms.
She hesitated for a split second before pulling out her slender tail from its back pocket. She coiled it around the silvery tube and started to climb the trunk, with difficulty, until she reached a small crack on the top of the trunk.
Ugo was working frantically at his displays while glancing at her from time to time, apparently amused by her childish efforts to sabotage him. His amusement ended rather abruptly when she opened the tube and spilled its contents through the crack. The abomination’s scream of disgust showed her that she reached the target.
“Dolmecs!”
Thousands of parasitic scavengers, stinking worse than a mountain of putrid carcasses, fell inside the dome—some of them landing right on the avatar’s head. The aggressive critters didn’t waste time, jumping around and sticking their disgusting suckers on all available surfaces—especially on Ugo’s exposed head and hands—in search of a nice meal to lick.
“I made them hungry, as you like them. I didn’t forget your phobia, Uncle, ” Sandara said, laughing loudly. “Enjoy your meal!” she added to the dolmecs sarcastically.
As expected, it was less than a second before Ugo stormed out of his dome, madly wiping at the parasites stuck on his head and clothes, his face twisted in anger. When he spoke, his voice intonation didn’t promise anything good.
“Crazy female, what do you think you’re doing?”
“I thought it was obvious—I’m having a little fun,” Sandara said with a giggle as she climbed down the tree.
“The fun is over! Look, for the sake of old times, I’m willing to forgive your follies if you get out of my way—right now!”
“You really lost your smell,” Sandara exclaimed. “I’ll never let you harm Gill! I suppose that’s what you were about to do, right?”
“Don’t you understand that he’s going to the aliens? They’ll do anything to stop their future gods, you and me!” he said, emphasizing the last words. “I know you care about him—I saw it in your eyes on Acanthia—but I can’t spare his life. We have to do it if we want to live!”
“Speak for yourself,” she replied coldly. “I want Gill to reach the aliens and come back with them, and you won’t fly anywhere in this ship!”
“You don’t leave me any other choice. You force me to do something I didn’t want to do… to my own niece. Well, it’s your choice,” he said, gnashing his teeth menacingly.
“Unbelievable, you’re having scruples,” she said quizzically. “Now you’ve really made me curious!”
“I don’t have time for this nonsense! Your friend has reached the orbit, and I have to prepare a little surprise for him,” he exclaimed, exasperated, while glancing at the trajectory of Gill’s ship on a red display that had followed him outside the hollow.
“If you dare—”
“Enough! You’ll have the honor of being the first one to try my new creations. I present you… my little soldiers!”
At his sign, a patch of discoidal grass crumbled in all directions, and a large matrix materialized in the rupture. Another identical one appeared nearby. They filled with shivering flesh, which quickly awoke to life. The lumps became two guvals, maybe even fiercer than in the games—their tiny eyes bloodshot with rage and fangs dripping foul-smelling saliva. Their fur was brown, not gray as usual.
“And you think these two will stop me?” she replied. “Somehow you forgot I’m dead? This isn’t a game to disconnect me!”
“Ahh, but here’s where you’re wrong about that! Will you please observe their nice little teeth? At least now, if you never paid attention to programming.” the monster said, grinning.
Indeed, the air around the yellowed teeth was hazy, as if its molecules were in constant turmoil.
“The most efficient delete functions ever written! They’re able to destroy Uralia’s fabric—and your avatar, too—if I give the order. Of course, you might hope that the island’s regeneration routines will repair the damage, but the wonderful news is that my deletion is eighty percent more efficient than the recovery. At some point, the stem algorithms lose the race, and poof, the avatar disappears.” He grinned with the happy face of a father proudly presenting his exceptionally gifted offspring.
“Traitor! How long did you work on this? There’s no way you programmed them just now!”
“Ha-ha, I’m afraid you’re right on that one.”
Sandara realized, stunned, that if such an attack had happened to a bixanid on a habitable island, the immortality chip would have been tricked that it detected cerebral death… while in fact, it was only the death of the avatar. The chip would have triggered the neural scanning, causing the physical death of the bixanid. Ugo knew it all too well because he had programmed the chips…