Flinx Transcendent_ A Pip & Flinx Adventure - Alan Dean Foster [196]
Truzenzuzex was whistling his pain, but nothing appeared to be seriously damaged. A human thus flung aside would probably have broken bones. A thranx's chitinous exoskeleton could take tougher punishment. Tse-Mallory looked back over his shoulder at the beautiful deformation that was the product of another of the Meliorares' many biological missteps.
“If your aim is Flinx's death, why bother to board this ship? If you know that he's inside the red orb, why didn't you just destroy it the instant you arrived?”
The tip of her tongue stroked first her upper lip, then the lower. “All in good time, old man. A death delayed is a death magnified. A demise shared is a demise savored. I've worked a long time to reach this moment. Don't try to talk me out of my pleasure.” She indicated their surroundings. “I know those who built this vessel for him. I wanted to see it for myself. I wanted to see what kind of friends he had made.” She locked eyes with the irate sociologist. Did she ever blink? he wondered.
“You will watch him die,” Mahnahmi murmured contentedly. “Then I will kill you both. After that I will try to make a prize of this ship. If not…” She shrugged again. “It will be enough to have made the attempt. As for this astonishing place, whatever it is, wherever it is, it will return to the obscurity from which my brother has only momentarily resuscitated it.”
Rising from the injured Truzenzuzex's side, Tse-Mallory favored her with a stare of wizened incredulity. “You don't realize the significance of these surroundings, do you? You followed Flinx's ship without having the slightest notion of where it might lead. As we stand here talking you still have no idea how far you've come or what wonderment surrounds you.”
“I don't know and I couldn't care less,” she shot back. “If I can't exploit it for my own ends, then as far as I'm concerned it's just another grandiose alien folly. Like most follies, one probably better off forgotten.”
She would have continued—except that the ongoing, rambling, half-mad declamation that preoccupied her and claimed her full attention was interrupted by a pair of unexpected arrivals. The newcomers to the conversation were not members of her entourage and did not subscribe to their beliefs or to their leader's objectives. Having carried out a necessarily hasty but nonetheless efficient reconnoiter of the state of affairs extant in the Teacher's control chamber, the newcomers proceeded to take steps to rectify them.
As a fully anointed padre in the Security Services of the United Church, Sylzenzuzex never traveled anywhere without the personal armaments that were part of her private kit. She would have felt naked without them. Opportunely, though each was designed to be manipulated by small, four-digited thranx hands, at least one of the weapons was sufficiently undemanding that Clarity could operate it.
With their ordnance tuned for in-ship combat, the two females used the entry portal for cover as they fired repeatedly into the control chamber. Their fully-charged shockers brought down several members of the Order of Null before the survivors managed to find some cover of their own and return fire. Adding to the confusion, Scrap had launched herself from Clarity's shoulder. Streaking around the bridge just below the ceiling, dodging the panicky shots of increasingly flustered Order members, the flying snake spat death at those attempting to conceal themselves.
Holding herself aloof from and ignoring the pandemonium swirling around her, Mahnahmi's eyes narrowed as she sought the source of the unexpected counterattack. But dominant as she was, she was no different from her brother in at least one respect: she could only concentrate on one threat at a time. As she prepared to squeeze Clarity's mind to a lump of enflamed meat incapable of conscious thought, a heavy male body slammed into her from behind. Though as an offensive strategy the primitive assault harkened back to tactics that had been employed since dawn of humankind, it was still uncompromisingly effective. As chaos