19. Thestle Part VI Loss & Failure

Lupo shrieked noiselesslyin torment as he was forced to stare at Auren's face. It stared lifelessly back at him from where it lay inert on the floor. Bartie was laughing hysterically behind him as Lupo's clone unzipped his pants and began to noisily suck his cock.

Lupo was trying his best to disassociate from it all—bent only on re-enabling his motor functions so that he might finally enact vengeance on Bartie. He had wondered if he'd actually be able to go through with it—to kill the man—when he first arrived.

Frankly, up until what had just happened with Auren, the truth was he hadn't been. But he was now. His hate and fury propelled him onward through his system index as he searched for whatever malware Bartie had used against him until… there. He'd found it—the backdoor he'd used was usually the last place Lupo would have considered looking. He had to admit Bartie was clever.

And about to be very, very dead.

Lupo removed the intrusion of the code, closing himself off from external communication. He flipped himself athletically to the floor.

"But you're supposed to be frozen!" Bartie yelped, rising in fear.

Lupo landed on his feet. He startled for a moment as he heard a roaring hiss from the doorway and realized with equal parts relief and horror that his attempts to revive Ophion—to call for help—had been miraculously answered.

There was a thud near him on the dais, and when he spun around, he saw his clone being lifted up into the air by an invisible entity. The clone screamed and was then thrown so hard onto the floor that one of his artificial eyeballs popped out. Ophion smashed it into a paste before picking the scrambling Lupo-clone back up and hurling it onto the table, where it slid some few meters, knocking various dishes to the ground. There was a tense silence, and then the invisible lizard leapt on top of the clone and began ripping it limb from limb while it screamed.

"Kill them!" Bartie commanded the partygoers.

His voice cracked at the effort as he scrambled across his chair. Lupo tensed as he watched Bartie grab their Keth rifles. A door slid open behind him in the asteroid wall, and Bartie disappeared down a side passageway that sealed off behind him. The revelers rose en masse, grabbing forks and knives. They began to stab and prod at the air, searching for the invisible Keth intruder. A few had splintered off from the main group and were approaching Lupo. He grabbed Auren's head in one arm and bolted, leaping clear over the table.

One of the partygoers grabbed at his leg when he landed, impaling him with a steak knife. He winced, disabling his pain feedback. Then, he watched in awe as the man had his face ripped off by Ophion, who hurled his body into the nearest assaulters, the impact sending them all tumbling to the ground.

"I believe we are outnumbered," Ophion rumbled from nearby.

More and more androids had poured into the dining hall now, some armed and firing ill-aimed shots of plasma bolts.

"Get back to the ship!" Lupo yelled.

He looked one last time at Auren's beheaded body on the dais before clutching tightly at his severed skull and bounding down the dark stone corridor. He could hear the thunder of Ophion's heavy tread behind him. The lizard easily kept pace with his artificial speed.

A blood-red light appeared ahead.

"Leaving so soon?" Charon asked, its tone light and cheery. "Minotaur II will jump in just a few minutes. Don't you want to stick around and see what true prosperity and freedom look like? You should know we will have orbited to within range of the Keth vessels very soon. It would be a shame to lose you so soon," it continued, friendly and helpful as ever. "You'll be obliterated if you leave," it added.

"Get out of the way!" Lupo growled, swiping at the air where the bizarre machine hovered. It dodged, its green light pulsing rapidly as it trailed them to the airlock.

"Bartie is a good man, capable of great things. He is going to lead these survivors to utopia!" the drone went on. "Come back!"

They'd finally reached the bay, and watching an invisible Ophion putting on a human flight suit, lit by Charon's sickly light, wasn't enough to distract Lupo from Auren. He'd failed him. He couldn't bring himself to look at the younger man's face. The feeling of his cold flesh and soft hair was the worst thing Lupo could have ever imagined.

"… You're making a mistake!" Charon prattled on as the airlock cycled closed, cutting it off with finality.

"I am sorry for your loss. There was no honor in his death," Ophion said.

"Thank you, friend. For everything," Lupo replied.

The airlock hisssssed, and then the vacuum of the landing bay made further speaking impossible. Lupo tucked Auren under an arm and ran to the Fortunato. Once on board, he raced to the flight controls, set his head down in the co-pilot's seat, and maneuvered their sleek craft out of the asteroid as swiftly as possible.

As they slipped out of the little hole Auren had carved, he realized he hadn't told Ophion about the Keth invasion yet. As Charon had warned, the asteroid had indeed crossed perilously close to the alien battlefleet, and the massive expanse of its mainline cruisers was impossible to miss even from their current distance.

Ophion hissed at the sight of them, and for a moment, Lupo worried that he might rip off his head and commandeer the Fortunato in order to reunite with his people.

"I should have told you…" Lupo began.

"Get us out of here," Ophion growled. "We are within range of their weapons and their engine-disabling field should they re-enable it."

Lupo frantically directed all ship power to the Alcubierre drive, setting course to the first place that came to mind: Obila.

His sensors indicated that Minotaur II had just blinked into hyperspace behind them, and the disappearance of such a large orbital body caused the nearest of the Keth battleships to begin angling itself in their direction.

"Quickly, they will fire the moment they detect us," Ophion urged.

"I'm going as fast as I can!" Lupo gritted, clicking through the last of the destination screens and tensing as the ship's countdown began.

"Five… four… three… two… one…"

Lupo thought he'd feel relief when they blinked out—that surviving the Keth invasion might give him some thrill or catharsis. It didn't. He sat heavily in his seat, still unable to look at Auren.

Even if they weren't interdicted on their way to Obila, he couldn't be certain that the planet would be anything more than a smoldering ruin when they arrived. He'd lost Thestle. He'd lost Auren. He hadn't even dealt with Bartie.

Lupo began to sob as the stars raced by.