The Red King - Michael A. Martin [4]
The image on the screen continued its slow, stately pirouette, stubbornly constant. What was I expecting? Frane thought, chuckling quietly to himself. Was the Sleeper supposed to answer our prayers? Did I really expect Him to come fully awake right at this moment and promise to save us from the destruction that’s coming down upon us?
There would be no engraved invitations to watch the apocalypse from some safe cosmic balcony. When the Sleeper finally awoke, when its mystical dreams no longer served to sustain the very existence of M’jallanish space, Frane expected to wink out of existence along with everything else within at least a hundred pars’x—just as the ancient His’lant physicist-priests had foretold.
An alarm whooped loudly at that moment, startling Frane out of his doleful reverie. Nozomi jumped high at the sound, her tail and bare feet instinctively grabbing purchase on one of the control room’s ceiling-mounted gangways.
“Frane!” said Lofi, an unusual urgency underlying her customarily even, synthetic voice. “I am detecting several ships, closing rapidly on the energy cloud. They are headed straight for us.”
A knot of apprehension began to form in Frane’s stomach. “What kind of ships?”
“Neyel military, cylindrical configuration. They’re warning us to stand down, and to prepare to be teleported aboard their flagship.” Lofi turned an eyestalk directly toward him. “They’re asking for you specifically, Frane.”
The knot in Frane’s belly suddenly tightened like an ancient slavecatcher’s noose. He could think of only one military officer who would have asked for him by name.
“Bring the male Neyel prisoner directly to me,” Drech’tor Gherran said, his eyes remaining fixed upon the strange phenomenon that covered his main control room’s central viewer. He glanced away from the coruscating cloud, looking down at the bracelet of exotic shells and stones and fabric that adorned his left wrist.
“And the woman?” replied Harn, his ever-efficient helmrunner and subaltern. If Harn had noticed how distracted Gherran was feeling at the moment, he betrayed no sign of it.
“Leave her in confinement with the indigies,” Gherran said, gently caressing the bracelet with the spade-shaped tip of his tail.
Harn looked slightly askance at Gherran’s order, but dutifully moved to the communications panel on the opposite side of the control room, where he began carrying out his instructions. Crisply and efficiently, as ever.
Moments later, a pair of black-uniformed Neyel security officers exited the lift tube, a slight, robed figure herded between them, his hands bound behind his back. The guards looked confused at having been told to bring their charge to the ship’s sensitive control room.
The prisoner seemed far too calm for someone in such a vulnerable position. But that came as no surprise to Gherran.
“Release his bindings,” Gherran said. “Then leave us.”
“Sir?” said the senior guard, his eyeshutters opening and closing rapidly in surprise.
“Do it!”
The guards hastened to comply, and seconds later had withdrawn from the control room. The handful of instrumentation officers present watched discreetly as the prisoner stepped toward Gherran, rubbing his just-freed wrists as he moved.
“Are you going to interrogate me here, Drech’tor Gherran, right in front of everyone?” the prisoner said in what the drech’tor recognized as a mocking tone. He gestured toward Harn and the other members of the control room crew. Each of them immediately looked away, conspicuously busying themselves at their various consoles.
Gherran pointed toward a hatchway located equidistant between the lift tube and the head. “In my prep chamber. Now.”
The prisoner shrugged and did as he was told. After the hatch had closed, ensuring their privacy, the robed detainee turned toward him, the hard gray skin of his mouth turning up