Meating Of The Minds - Part 2

“It seems we can benefit each other.” Commander Lyscene paused hoping that would sink in, his captor didn’t seem all that bright, but that could just be a consequence of speaking an unfamiliar language. “Let’s take turns. You ask a question, then I shall. Do you agree?”

There was a long pause, finally the other accepted. “Yes.”

“Okay, now tell me, how is my ship…and crew?” Lyscene recalled the simple creature’s concern for others’ lives. That was the first weakness he would exploit.

“The ship was repaired, you are the only one alive.”

“Am I…”

“It is MY turn.” The force of the simple sentence left no question as to the resolve it meant. “Where is your substrate?”

“My, what?”

“All bodies from your crew were found and interred, except one. The substrate, the one below you.”

“I don’t remember.”

In a movement quicker than Lyscene would have expected possible, his captor moved right to him, and grasped his face, the oversized hand quickly making everything black. A slight tingle and the blackness changed to a low-res…recording….yes, Lyscene could tell he was seeing a playback, how was beyond his comprehension, of security footage from the Juggernaut. It the command module, and Lyscene saw himself in the command chair. As expected he knew what came next. First Aide Parenthaw entered and was thrusting a confidential copy of the latest scan. There was no audio, just two angry men gesticulating wildly and then Lyscene drew his weapon. With a blinding flash, a full blast hit Parenthaw and the Aide dissipated his atoms dispersed in a painful instant.

“Where did he go?”

“You saw…you saw right? You showed me, you must have seen. You saw. You saw and you didn’t understand. One moment he was there, then he wasn’t, but that doesn’t make sense to you. You don’t have energy weapons? You can’t conceive of a body just disappearing can you?” Lyscene worked it all out, out-loud with his musing, but the captor never changed expression. It just asked the same question.

“Where did he go?”

“How can you have all this medical technology to heal me, it seems effortlessly, to repair my ship, or was that a lie? How can you be so lop-sided in what you know and what you don’t know?”

“Your crew knew these things. We learned.”

“How, if they were all dead? You HAVE been lying.”

“I do not need to lie, a concept we have just begun to understand from you. We absorbed their bodies into the ground, their memories are part of our collective. There is much new information we are processing. None of your substrates knew of a weapon like what you used on Parenthaw.”

“That’s true, it is a means of last resort, but he tried to move in on my percentages. What are you doing? I am losing control…”

“Your healer knew of a drug, we are approximating it, he thought of it as truth-serum. I am tired of your obfuscation, tell me WHERE DID HE GO?”

“I atomized him, he is nowhere, I killed him.”

“Why?”

“A few months ago I realized the last scan of your planet was wrong, the radiation levels couldn’t have been what had been recorded, so I knew either the level was incorrect either by malfunction or on purpose. So I managed to get my ship assigned to do another check. As before we only detected wasteland and no intelligent life. But I know how to check negative infrareds. I’ve found crystalline deposits worth many fortunes. I will get a finders fee percentage that would have me set for life. My Aide knew it, and tried to blackmail me. I eliminated that threat to my livelihood.”

“How many other cultures are there?”

“Hundreds, maybe thousands.”

“Your race will want to trade for some of our resources?”

“Erishum will not trade. He will send ship after ship, endless forces to ravage every bit of your planet until it becomes the wasteland we thought it was originally.”

“I could kill you, keep you from alerting your leader.”

“Too late, I sent a signal the moment my theory was confirmed. There is nothing you can do to stop what is coming. Killing me won’t stop a thing.”

“No, but it will make me feel better.”

The medical intervention services stopped abruptly. The pain-nullifcation first, meaning Lyscene was able to feel the agony of all his bodily systems fail one by one and in quick succession. It was a matter of moments not minutes, then his body was cremated, there was no need to absorb his mind into the collective.

Signar, a Moltin, from the planet Creeateen, realized he had a lot to think over, and a lot to explain. One thing was certain, the future for the Moltin was going to be much different than their past.