The First Nova I See Tonight by Jason Kilgore (the false prince .txt) 📕

worlds. Among them was a rotund human male with Indian features, wearing a dark blue business suit; a female Pleiadean in a cloth-of-gold dress, her face half-hidden by a silver gossamer veil; a double-chinned Jen'torian clothed in a purple trench coat surrounded by spinning, multi-colored holograms and a platinum-plated atmospheric mask on his face; a Corthian with palladium foil-tipped feathers and a vest that shifted colors depending on the angle, her feet wrapped in gold ribbon and talons coated in gold.

Only a few of the drug lords looked toward Dirken and Yiorgos, turning away again with a mild disgust as if they couldn't be troubled to be around such commoners.

"That's Arjun Mukherjee," Yiorgos whispered to Dirken, nodding toward the human in the suit. Dirken already knew. Mukherjee was the most powerful drug lord in Asia.

"And the Jen'torian is Mindol the Undertaker," Dirken replied. "His minions control two planetary systems."

Dimitri's rifle barrel poked Dirken in the back. "Last warning, fool. Pipe down or I'll shut you up for good. I don't give a damn where we are, either."

A dozen guards stood around the room, outfitted in glossy orange plate armor and helmets that also covered their eyes, dual-pulse rifles raised and ready. Their helmets and armor were festooned with various sensors, but there were no eye slits. He knew from their reputation that this was the "Saffron Guard," an elite cyborg bodyguard unit that protected all high-ranking Eridani, and their eyes had been replaced by implants that hardwired their brains into the sensors of the armor. The armor would have numerous weapons, including hidden mini-missiles, besides what they had in their hands. Their limbs were mechanically enhanced. Such facts weren't hidden. The Eridani openly advertised it, boasting about the extreme pain that the Saffron Guard had endured to become "perfect," the powerful weapons they wielded, and the specialized drug cocktails they took to enhance their strength and reaction time — drugs that you (or your bodyguards) could receive as well… for the right price. Sometimes they even gifted one or two of the Saffron Guard to a general or politician. Or, just to show off, they entered one of them into the gladiator pits of Orgross, the bi-annual Battle Royale on Esak'tenorbro, or the vaunted Death Olympics of Rigel, where they typically won.

Yiorgos and Dirken were paraded through the room until they were about three meters from a massive, circular dais at the far end, so large that it might be called a "stage." Behind the dais emerged another tunnel that led to a wide, red, reinforced metal blast door. The ceiling over the dais had a metal iris that matched the dais in size and shape.

Dimitri kicked Dirken in the back of his knee. "On your knees, fool!"

Dirken lowered himself down, eyeing Dimitri with resentment.

A Reptiloc guard followed suit and slammed the butt of his pulse rifle into Yiorgos's back. It hissed in its language, and the translator necklace barked, "Down!" Yiorgos knelt as told, flashing Dirken a look of concern as both Dimitri and the Reptiloc lowered the barrels of their pulse rifles to the back of his and Yiorgos's heads, execution-style.

Eow set the sphere off to the side of the dais with a heavy clank. It rolled slightly to one side, the little green lights pulsing through a dusty crevice in the metal plates, and came to rest with the ancient English words upside down. Dirken figured that one good lunge would be enough to reach it, but as long as a pulse rifle was pointed at him, he'd be dead before he could take another step.

Yiorgos's plasma saber arm was set down next to the sphere along with Dirken's blaster and Yiorgos's mini-blaster.

As Dirken looked around the room, the rich drug lords turned to watch, a mix of bemusement and boredom on their faces. Just two more rubes to be punished or humiliated. Dirken wanted very much to walk up to the nearest ones and wring their snobby necks. Yes-men who enabled the Eradini empire and its expansion into drug dens around this sector of the galaxy and all of the vice, violence, and decrepitude that came with it.

Dirken looked back to the dais and sighed. He was hardly innocent of all that. He had run his share of drugs for bastards like these — first on Tesla as a teen and young adult, then across the galaxy in his ship. Or paying others to run it for him, like 'TakTrak and the load of Cygnus hash. Maybe he should be thankful it burned. In his mind's eye, he saw the state of the slaves in Grimmag's drug labs. Dirken came to a decision, right there on his knees with his hands on his head, that if he survived the next few hours he'd never run drugs again.

The red, reinforced door slid open and two figures emerged from the tunnel behind the dais, marching side-by-side in formal fashion before it closed again behind them. One was a squat, bat-like species called a Gogonoian, his gray, naked body covered in bright yellow tattoos in swirl patterns. He waddled on short, bent legs, his spiral-shaped penis swinging between them with each step. His batwings and arms were outstretched in a display of pride, beady eyes shifting back and forth and squinting against what Dirken considered low light.

The other was an albino human woman wearing a tight-fitting, mottled gray suit and carrying a lyrophone, a musical instrument that the performer blows into while manipulating keys with one hand, like a saxophone, and strumming metal strings with the other hand, like a lyre. Her frost blue eyes shifted from under a mop of bright white hair to stare at Dirken and Yiorgos with an intensity that Dirken interpreted as recognition. Yet he was certain he'd never seen her before.

As the Gogonoian and human woman moved to stand at opposite sides of the dais, the woman looked at the corner of the dais where Dirken and Yiorgos's blasters had been laid, along