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

'Torac'mik'ac bowed again. "I am humbled by the honor, don Grimmag. Thank you." She then gave a quick bow to her fellow lords.

The don gave a nod-like shrug then added, "I expect you to double your profits in the next Corthian year. You may return to your place."

The Corthian stood up sharply, her eyes going wide, then turned and stepped back to her place in obvious shock.

Grimmag's sloshing speech seemed to take a deeper tone. The Morlani translated, "But despite all of this good news, I am disturbed." Grimmag waved a tentacle. "There is a government crackdown on Tantalus III. Fifty of our drug labs have been raided on that planet and shut down. Profits have fallen. Our supply chain to neighboring systems is collapsing."

Grimmag motioned with one of his tentacles toward the onlookers. "Mindol, approach."

Eow gave a look toward Dirken that he couldn't quite interpret — expectation, perhaps? — then watched as Mindol walked past her.

The double-chinned Jen'torian, Mindol the Undertaker, stepped forward, his steps confident. But he was followed by two of the Saffron Guard, their weapons at the ready. Mindol took up a position between Dirken and the dais.

"Salutations, don Grimmag," Mindol said, his words muffled by the platinum-coated breathing apparatus covering his face. "Iwishonly toserve." Like other Jen'torians, his words were run together and drunken-sounding, with gasps in between phrases, but Mindol was more coherent in his common speech than the vast majority of his species. Nonetheless, he adjusted a translator device built into his breathing apparatus, then repeated. "I wish only to serve." No device could adequately translate to the Eridani language.

The Morlani translated Mindol's words to Grimmag. Grimmag responded, "Tantalus III is your system, correct?"

"Yes, don Grimmag. But the crackdown there started with the assassination of my lieutenants. I…."

Grimmag broke him off. "Excuses are not my problem, Mindol. The problems are yours. You must own them."

"Yes, of course, but…."

"And your ruthlessness caused the crackdown."

"I respectfully disagree, don Grimmag. Conservatives in the Tantalus legislature…."

"You murdered an entire plaza full of protesters," Grimmag continued. He shifted and pointed a tentacle at Mindol. "While tough measures must on occasion be taken, you took the lives of hundreds of Tantalians, including juveniles."

"A statement needed to be made."

"And you made that statement. Now we all pay for it." Grimmag waved a tentacle toward the Saffron Guardsmen. "Strip off his clothing."

Mindol turned to the guards and backed away. "Do not touch me!"

One guard slammed the butt of his dual pulse rifle into Mindol's face, knocking the man backward. Mindol tried to grab the weapon, but the other guard swung with an armored arm and contacted Mindol's left wrist. An audible crack issued as his cartilage-like bones broke. Mindol wailed in pain.

As one guard held the Jen'torian, the other ripped off the purple trench coat. The holograms that had orbited the man fell away and flickered off. Then the guard ripped off the teal shirt and pants, leaving Mindol standing on his four, thin, wobbly legs with only his white undergarments and the mask connected by a tube to a series of air purification pouches and control packs around his midsection.

The other drug lords shifted nervously, muttering to each other, but not daring to interfere.

"Now the rest of it!" Grimmag commanded.

"No please, my don! I will not be able to breathe!"

The guards didn't pay any heed to Mindol's words. He struggled, but they held him down on the floor and punched his face with their gauntlets as he screamed in pain. They ripped off the mask and pulling the undergarments off in tatters, leaving him nude, exposing his multi-branching penis, his gray skin, and the floret-like bunches of fleshy skin across his back which help his species breathe.

Mindol immediately started heaving for air, his hands going to his throat. His eyes turned gray-blue as they filled with blood. "Mylord!" he gasped, his words bubbling out of his carp-like mouth without the translator. "Mercy! Pleashhavemercy…."

Grimmag didn't offer any. "I will deliver your body to Tantalus III, Mindol, and leave it in the plaza where the bricks are still stained with the blood of your victims." Grimmag shifted back toward his audience. "Let it be a lesson to the rest of you. We make many hard decisions, and some level of violence is necessary to assert control, but when we become butchers, no payoff will turn the heads of those who attempt to police us."

Dirken blinked in surprise at the irony of brutally killing your own man because he had brutally killed others. It wasn't the usual 'revenge killing.'

Grimmag grumbled more words, but the Morlani did not translate. Instead, a Pleiadean slave with matted fur came up with a wide brass basin filled with various raw meats and placed it in front of the don.

Grimmag vomited forth a clear liquid, which splashed into the bowl and immediately started steaming.

The servant shrieked. She fell back, grasping her arm and rolling on the ground. Her forearm bubbled where the vomit had splashed against it, the flesh falling off the bone as she screamed in horror.

And as she writhed in pain on the dais, Mindol the Undertaker flailed in torment of his own on the floor, arching his back and gulping for air, hands to his head and shaking, his gray, bifurcated tongue lolling out of his wide mouth.

The slave was dragged off the dais and back down the hallway, screaming in agony, as Grimmag extended his mouth like a giant, fleshy straw and slurped at the bubbling, acidic broth in the basin. His four tentacles waved over the bowl and occasionally reached in to stir the corrosive slurry, unaffected by the acid.

Dirken looked around at the drug lords. Most had turned away.

Grimmag finished and wiped his mouth with his tentacles.

Mindol gave a final spasm, all of his muscles tightening at once, his four legs going rigid, then he suddenly relaxed and fell still, blue-gray blood dribbling out of his nose, eyes, and mouth.

Grimmag gestured at the two guards and