Ugo knew that he had underestimated his niece’s motivation to defeat him and that they now were stronger than him. He lost all his pride, all the earlier arrogance, and collapsed to the ground, broken, devastated by the unforgiving attack, unable to say anything.
“Where are your screens?” asked one of them.
“What screens?” he growled.
“Ugo!”
The jure had no intention of making their lives any easier, so he just threw them a fierce look, holding his jaws clenched. Then one of the grahs stumbled on something invisible and fell to the ground. She leaped to her feet, rubbing her face. Driven by a suspicion, she blew a fine golden powder she had materialized in her palm, which briefly outlined one of the invisible displays nearby. The Sandara blew again, and before the display had a chance to disappear, she tapped on its surface.
“Stay visible, or I’ll make you a nice hole!” she shouted, pointing a laser lens at it.
Trembling in fear, the red architect followed her orders and remained visible. With the help of the other fighters, more and more displays were found on the hill. Soon, a whole pack was escorted to Ugo, amid the cheerful shouts of the fighters.
After they had found all the interfaces, his captors again gathered around him.
“Don’t kill me,” he said, sighing.
“Give me a reason!” snapped one Sandara, pointing her sarpan at his neck.
“I can help. I… I can help you drive this ship.”
“Kill him!” shouted another one. “We don’t go anywhere from here!”
“All riiiight… go ahead and kill me,” the monster grinned. “Gill will die, too, but that’s your choice.”
“What do you mean he’ll die?” asked the Sandara holding the sarpan.
“He’s bluffing,” jumped another one.
“Right, I’m bluffing,” he mocked her.
The first Sandara poked him in the throat, looking indifferently at the bleeding wounds gaped by the fangs of her sarpan.
“I’m counting to three.”
Ugo could read the determination in her eyes and knew she wasn’t joking.
“Gill is not going to return,” he said quickly.
“What?”
“Do you think the Grammians will let him go to the Federals? I’m sure they will kill him before he reaches the Rigulians. Think a bit logically. Oh, I forgot you can’t do—ouch!” he cried when the female jabbed him deeper.
“You monster, don’t forget you’re at my mercy!”
“If you want my help, get your piece of scrap off my neck!” he replied defiantly.
Sandara pretended she didn’t hear, leaning even harder on the weapon’s handle.
“All right, we’ll spare your life for the moment,” said another Sandara, pushing aside the sarpan of the first clone. “Say what you have to say, monster!”
“The prophet is really friendly with the aliens called Grammians. I believe… I’ve some theories about…”
“Leave the theories aside,” a Sandara said, cutting his explanations short. “What’s with Gill?”
“Well, the Grammians won’t let him contact the Federals. I have my reasons to believe he’ll be attacked on Antyra’s outskirts.”
The Sandaras felt the world crumbling around them. From what Gill had told about the so-called Antyran gods, the Grammians, they realized they had to take Ugo’s appraisal seriously.
“Which I don’t dislike at all,” Ugo hurried to add, “but I tend to believe that you’re not going to agree.” He paused, grinning, before continuing, “And here comes my part—”
“Which is?”
“Errr… I could drive this ship…”
“No way!”
“I could teach one of you to drive it…”
“That sounds better.”
“I hope you understand that it will take some time before we pull this thing off!” he exclaimed with feigned exasperation. “If you’d give me back my architects and let me drive it, we’d take off quickly!”
“Regardless of the risks,” one of the Sandaras said, “you’re not getting anywhere near the displays. But there’s one thing I don’t get, and I really want you to enlighten me: Why were you so anxious to shoot Gill if you’re so sure that the Grammians are going to attack him anyway?”
“You see, my dear niece,” said Ugo, this time without daring to sound as if he were mocking her, the memory of the sarpan’s teeth in his neck still lingering, “even I learn a few things now and then. I learned to appreciate this Antyran! He escaped so many times from the prophet’s tail that I was afraid he might do it again. And since I am acquainted with the Grammians, I’m not convinced they’re up to the task of killing him. It would have been much safer to blast him with my own hands. You know I’m a big fan of things done thoroughly,” he tried a reluctant smile.
At that point, several Sandaras emerged on the hill, dragging what appeared to be some sort of huge egg. Ugo almost burst into laughter, realizing they wanted to close him inside it, until he noticed the air tremor along the inside walls. The walls and ceiling were made from guval teeth, and only the floor had a small spot with the roots up, allowing a space for him to stand. But underneath it, other teeth raised their deadly heads, so it was obvious he couldn’t escape through there.
“Spacious dome,” a female said mockingly as soon as the egg arrived nearby.
Ugo heard one of the Sandaras, who was busy studying a captured red architect, say loudly, “Well, well, did you know that Uncle Ugo recorded several experimental avatars before he died?”
Unbearable! he thought, squirming. How did she find out so quickly?
One of the Sandaras pushed him rather unceremoniously into the egg, which was installed on a pile of boulders. Ugo lost his balance and hit his back on the wall of teeth, which promptly bit his flesh.
“You know it hurts like hell, don’t you?” he lamented.
“Yes,” the Sandara who had pushed him in replied, smiling. “Yes, I know.”
***
While the Sandaras were struggling to put the abomination in chains, Gill struggled to order something to eat from the printers on the Grammian ship’s bridge—he was pretty sure that another serving of the horrible porridge would be unbearable. The stuff tasted so bad he’d rather chew the synthetic fluff he slept on than eat that atrocity again.
After spending some time reading the huge printer index, he finally found something that resembled food. It was a cake of bozal pulp with four asok balls pressed on top of it. He couldn’t believe his luck—he had finally found Antyran food onboard the Grammian ship! He tasted it, and to his surprise, it was really good.
Bent over the navigation table, he was staring at Antyra’s star when, suddenly, one of the hot balls melted the bozal pulp and fell through his fingers—right on the navigation table. The surface, being tactile, reacted to the mishap in the worst possible way: Antyra’s star vanished from the screen, and the ship made a series of crazy jumps and tumbles.
With his hearts shrunk as a fluff of licant, he threw the cake and wiped off the table, causing even more chaos in the navigation systems. I have a hunch the Grammians weren’t allowed to eat here, he thought, upset by his carelessness. It took him some time to find Antyra and set the course in the right direction.
CHAPTER 15.
“Today is the end of innocence!” Baitar Raman shouted, grinning at his Gondarran assassins before he gave the order to attack. Of course, anyone—including Raman—would find it very hard to imagine the bloodthirsty fighters of the misty swamps as ’innocents’. And rightly so: the armor of the worthiest ones didn’t dry for days, constantly soaked in the blood of their victims. But compared with what they were going to do, any other crimes they had done in the past could indeed be considered just some silly mischief. For Raman ordered them to destroy the grah civilization.
***