The Dark Lord's Vessel

Chapter 10

Chapter 10

What man of you, having a hundred sheep,

If he loses one of them, does not

Leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness,

And go after the one which is lost until he finds it?

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—Luke 15:4

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KASIB

Sata'anic Naval Acquisitions Officer, Lieutenant Kasib, took the flatscreen from the trembling young cryptologic technician who stood before his desk, his chartreuse dorsal ridge reared firmly at attention. He noted the way the radio tech's tail twitched nervously as he passed along the morning briefing. From the taste of his pheromone imbalance, the young lizard was about to faint from fear.

"I'll tell him," Kasib sighed. "Go on. You're dismissed."

The young private's immature dewlap turned a grateful shade of pink as he pressed his clawed hand up tighter against his eyebrow-ridge and gave him a crisp "Sir!"

Kasib waited until the private disappeared before examining the report which had been loaded onto the flatscreen. If this was a normal Sa'atanic base, it all would have been transmitted wirelessly, but all progress on this planet had come to a screeching halt due to the significant crimp in their supply chain.

He ran a claw along the cool, flat glass to touch the red dot marking the beacon the SRN Jamaran had picked up from orbit.

"So? I see you're still alive."

He wasn't sure how he felt about the fact their young human protégé had set off a distress beacon. He wanted the angry young chieftain to survive, but worried it might be just a ploy to lure them into another disgraceful defeat.

Damned Lucifer! General Hudhafah should have told Ba'al Zebub to hiss off when he'd shown up here with the Alliance Prime Minister and offered a couple of power cores in exchange for Jamin's expertise and two of their gunships to root out a 'troublemaker.'

He resisted the urge to throw the flatscreen across the room. That was General Hudhafah's job. Though with their power supplies down to nil, maybe it would be better if he transferred the report to a different device before the general smashed it against the wall of the musty stone temple he'd taken over as his office?

What would Shay'tan do?

He stared at the icon he'd tacked to his office wall, a cheap mass-printed poster mounted in an acrylic frame. The scarlet dragon smiled out at him, his curved, golden horns framing his shapely snout like a halo. The ink had begun to fade, giving Shay'tan a soft, almost romantic appeal as he sat upon his throne, his paw raised to bestow beneficence and military might upon his armies.

Shay'tan would want him to preserve their precious military resources. With a sigh, he reached into the knee-high pile of scrap salvaged from previous flatscreens the General had destroyed, found one which would still power up, and transferred a copy of the data onto the faulty device.

He stood and arranged the bouquet of tiny, fragrant flowers his wife, Taram, had given him to decorate the makeshift altar. It was a fruitless gesture; the fact he'd taken a human wife would condemn him to hard labor should General Hudhafah find out he'd broken their marriage laws, but the Shay'tan was also an expedient creature. Perhaps, with her heartfelt gesture of devotion, Taram might win the old dragon's mercy?

"Shay'tan be praised." He gesticulated to his head, his snout and his heart. He paused and reflected upon his place in the great wheels of Shay'tan's armies. He was a cog. A very small, insignificant cog, tasked with ensuring the very large cog on the other side of that door didn't blow a gasket.

He hesitated long enough to straighten up his collar and his rank pins before he knocked on General Hudhafah's door.

"Enter!"

He slipped inside, his tail held stiffly at attention along his right-hand side as he gave the General a salute and held out the flatscreen. General Hudhafah looked up from the enormous pile of paperwork piled up to his chin in old-fashioned paper folders, looking very out of place, a battle-scarred veteran amongst the trappings of bureaucracy.

"Report?" General Hudhafah said.

Kasib discreetly tasted the air. The General radiated pheromones of annoyance, anger, and just plain lack of sleep.

"Somebody just activated a new distress beacon," Kasib said.

General Hudhafah rose from his desk to tower over him, an enormous lizard with broad, muscular shoulders, a barrel chest, and a dark crimson dewlap. Most men on this base were terrified of Hudhafah, an alpha male among an entire species which had bred for a single purpose: war. He stepped towards the polyethylene map they'd spread across the primitive stone temple wall, the base lacking sufficient power to continuously run a large-sized flatscreen.

"Who's beacon is it?" Hudhafah asked.

Kasib's voice caught in his throat. "Jamin, Sir."

General Hudhafah growled a low, menacing sound which made most of the men on the base soil their uniform. Kasib had heard it often enough to be able to differentiate between the General's normal, 'I'd -like- to throttle somebody' growl from the one which actually preceded the General's clawed hand on a soldier's throat.

"It's his personal signal," Kasib added. "Not the signal code he was assigned during Lucifer's objective."

Hudhafah's sharp dorsal ridge reared in surprise.

"His personal signal, you say?"

"Yes, Sir," Kasib said. "It's from the device he claimed to have misplaced two weeks ago."

"Show me."

Kasib handed the General the flatscreen with the latest satellite data. It had been activated within the objective area, albeit on the far, outlaying edge. Hudhafah studied it.

"The Jamaran reported Lucifer's shuttle breached orbit and returned to the Prince of Tyre before it disappeared?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Do you think he dumped the kid off in the desert?"

Kasib tasted the air.

"No, Sir."

He didn't add what he thought the debauched Prime Minister was doing to their former scout. He'd opposed the trade … vehemently. The angry young chieftain had turned out to be a valuable asset. But the opportunity to be rid of the Angelic who'd been riling up the locals had proved too much of a temptation for Hudhafah to refuse.

"So it's a trick?"

Kasib's voice trembled.

"Maybe some of our men escaped and found that nomadic tribe Jamin was friendly with. The one that helped us line up mercenaries from the tribe to their south?"

General Hudhafah drummed his clawed fingers on the polyethylene map, close to the pins which showed where their two gunships had been shot down. Between here and there stretched an impassible desert, a six-week march on foot without a single drop of food or water to sustain their men.

"That was two months ago. How would they get his device now?"

"He, uh…" Kasib stammered. "Two weeks ago, they piloted a supply run down to the Uruk tribe to their south. On the way back, one of their engine warning lights went off. So they, uh, stopped there to make repairs."

Hudhafah growled.

"You mean your men decided to stop in so Jamin could visit that woman?"

Kasib trembled. He knew he should have reported them for indulging the little chieftain's whim!

"They met with that tribal shaykh," Kasib said. "The one Doctor Peyman saved by amputating his foot. He knows the Assurian's weaknesses intimately."

"Was Sergeant Dahaka with them?"

"Yes. He went there enough times that he might have found his way back to them on his own."

Hudhafah stared down at the flatscreen, and then glanced up at the map. The flatscreen was a piece of Leonid-dung. One which had been thrown, and broken, before.

"Godsdammit!" Hudhafah whipped the flatscreen against the wall. "How can we do anything to help them when that i***t, Lucifer, just tricked us into expending the last of our power nodes?"

Kasib stood at attention, his hand trembling as pieces of the flatscreen tinkled onto the floor. Sergeant Dahaka and the General had seen some serious action together. Ever since Dahaka's beacon had gone dark, Hudhafah had gone uncharacteristically silent.

Hudhafah's snout curled back into a fang-laden snarl. His gold-green eyes narrowed into cat-like slits.

"Is there anything else you've been keeping from me, Kasib?"

Sweat broke out on Kasib's brow ridge. I, uhm, took a human wife? She's really pretty, Sir. I kept her after I lied and told you she'd expired.

"No, Sir," he said aloud.

Hudhafah whirled and stabbed a finger at a second map, one which showed this section of the Orion-Cygnas spiral arm; the shattered remnant of a dwarf galaxy which had been swallowed by the Milky Way so long ago that not even Emperor Shay'tan remembered when it had happened.

"Has the Jamaran received any check-ins from our missing supply armada?" General Hudhafah asked.

"No, Sir," Kasib said.

"Do we have any proof the armada is even real?" Hudhafah asked. "And not just another one of Lucifer's games?"

"Only Ba'al Zebub's word, Sir."

Hudhafah jabbed a claw at the place where the second distress beacon hadn't moved for days.

"Do you know what I want you to do?" His snout curled up into a snarl. "Order the SRN Jamaran to drop a planet killer right here!"

Kasib blinked. "S-s-sir?" He stared at the push-pin, positive he couldn't have heard what he'd just heard. "The Jamaran doesn't carry planet-killers, Sir. With power so low, it's all they can do to maintain geosynchronous orbit. B-b-besides, we'd all be killed along with Ba'al Zebub."

"Exactly!" General Hudhafah's snout curved up into a malicious grin. "And wouldn't it feel so good if Ba'al Zebub died along with the rest of us expendable cannon fodder?"

Kasib kept his snout shut as he didn't know what to say.

General Hudhafah stared at the place Kasib fondled his cargo pants pocket.

"That wasn't the real flatscreen, was it?"

Kasib pulled out the incriminating evidence. General Hudhafah took it and carefully clicked on the power.

"Good man," he said. "I couldn't run this shithole of a base without you."