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

with the Heart and Yiorgos's saber arm. Her eyes instantly grew wide. She faltered a moment, seeming to forget to step and almost falling before catching herself. She then looked away as she took her position, composing herself. She blew into the mouthpiece and started to strum.

Her eyes kept moving toward their weapons and the Heart.

The sound of the lyrophone was a two-part harmony between the resonance of the strings and the tenor notes of the brass, easily filling the chamber with an eerie reverberation.

As she played, Dirken noted a letter "A" branded on her wrist, the scar standing out red and angry from her ivory white skin. Again. What the hell does it mean? he thought.

And then the Gogonoian began to sing. His mouth opened wider than any human's could and emitted an incredibly long, trilling note that started at mid-range and then went higher and higher until it passed beyond Dirken's hearing, the Gogonoian's throat still moving with notes Dirken could no longer perceive. Then he spiraled down again, back into Dirken's audial range, and moved in tune with the lyrophone music.

The audience of drug lords burst into applause in the various fashions of their worlds, clapping, snapping, or tapping. The Corthian flapped her palladium-tipped wings. The Gogonoian gave a quick bow and continued singing his thoroughly alien song with lyrics that Dirken couldn't hope to understand, whatever language it was, while a number of other species in the room gave him their rapt attention.

As the song seemed to wind down, the red reinforced door opened again and a gray-robed Morlani administrator walked out of the tunnel carrying a data pad. He stepped to the side of the opening, his long, fleshy "mustache" swaying with his movements.

When the Morlani stepped aside, Dirken saw a bulky figure emerging from the shadows in the tunnel. It was absolutely huge, filling the tunnel, undulating as it came.

All eyes turned to the tunnel. The music grew quiet.

The Morlani stood straight, the red torchlight making his bald head seem inflamed, and announced in its species' monotonal way, "Beware the coming of don Grimmag Ruby-Eye!"

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

GRIMMAG RUBY-EYE

Grimmag Ruby-Eye was the largest Eridani Dirken had ever seen. Like others of his species, he was basically a giant maggot with a wide, tubular body that wobbled as if filled with jelly, but he was taller than a human and as long as four people laying head-to-toe. Grimmag moved up to the dais with a caterpillar-like series of movements, his rolls of semi-transparent white skin rolling and undulating. Green and blue organs and bluish vessels were half-visible beneath, moving on their own and pumping. A line of breathing orifices as wide as a fist dotted each side of his body every half-meter or so, opening and closing independent of one another.

But his face was the most striking. Eridani don't have heads, per se, but rather a flattened front with four black, faceted eyes in a semicircle over a round mouth the size of a dinner platter that opened and closed like a sphincter. One of Grimmag's eyes had been replaced with a gigantic red, cut ruby. A jagged, gray scar ran through the eye around it. Arranged around his mouth were four white, octopus-like tentacles that waved in front of him. Dirken had heard they weren't just for touch, but also acted to "smell" the air or "taste" surfaces like the antennae of insects. On each side of his massive head were two bulbous, black ear pads.

Dirken gulped and made a conscious effort to steady himself instead of bolting.

Behind Grimmag marched a line of four servants with slave collars. The don stopped in the middle of the dais, then the Morlani stepped up next to him as the lyrophone music and singing came to an end. Their part finished, the Gogonoian and the albino human woman stepped down from the dais and took up positions on either side of the entrance to the back tunnel.

Grimmag spoke. It was like nothing Dirken had ever heard. From Grimmag's mouth came a wet sloshing and grumbling, which was joined by high-pitched punctuations — farts and whistles — that came from the breathing orifices on his sides.

The Morlani translated. "I am impressed with the returns from your hard work, my noble lords. Profits are up. Sales of Black Hole and Eros's Finger have increased nearly 10-fold in three systems. And our control over the Rigellian moons has been consolidated. Applaud yourselves."

The drug lords in the room clapped as ordered.

How the Morlani could possibly translate such a weird menagerie of sounds was beyond Dirken.

Grimmag continued, via his interpreter, "We must also celebrate recent in-roads for our trade on Corthos and the surrounding systems. 'Torac'mik'ac, step forward."

The Corthian with the palladium foil-tipped feathers strutted forward on her long, stork-like legs decorated with gold talons and ribbons. She gave an elaborate bow, then clacked in her language. A filigreed translator necklace translated her speech to say, "It is my pleasure to serve my don."

"You have distinguished yourself as a resourceful associate," Grimmag said, citing the title of a trusted mafia member. "You created a range of legitimate businesses in mining, freight transport, and compost by-products that are networked to cooperate with each other off-the-books to transport our wares and launder our money, none of which have roused suspicion by an authoritative body. You also fostered cooperation with local authorities through payoffs. You have built me a significant branch of our empire by transporting our products into the populations there." Grimmag gesticulated with his tentacles toward the Corthian. "It is my pleasure to reward you with my palace on the Corthian moon of Matataksi, a forty percent increase in your take, and to declare you a 'made man.'"

The drug lords clapped heartily at the granting of this esteemed title, with a "Well deserved!" shouted by the human, Mukherjee, along with other exultant exclamations in a variety of other languages. A "made man" was the highest ranking in the organization