ALL FOR LOVE
"The flagship throne room, like the Invid castle and hives on
Optera, was an organic chamber, so given over to the urgings of Protoculture
that its very bulkheads and sensor devices resembled living systems of
neural-tissue circuitry. Visceral greens and purples, they pulsed to rhythms
dictated deep within the ship's animate drives. So, too, the contoured control
couch itself, with its graceful curves, the slender arcing neck of its overhead
sensor lamp, its proboscislike forward communicator tube. The Regent did not so
much sit as reshape his being to the seat's demands.
On either side of him sat a Hellcat larger and more polished
than any of the standard versions, with collars encrusted with gems handpicked
from the spoils of a score of conquered worlds. Elsewhere, in cages, were
living samples from those same worlds: sentient prisoners from Karbarra,
Spheris, and the rest.
"We have searched, my lord," the trooper
continued. "The Sensor Nebula registers no presence of the Flowers. None
whatsoever."
"Fools!" muttered the Regent, canceling the
transmission. He could hear his wife's laughter behind him.
"Congratulations, husband," the
Regis mocked him from across the room. "Once again you have impressed us
all with your supreme stupidity."
"I don't like your tone," the Regent said, turning
to her.
One might have almost mistaken her for a humanoid life-form;
certainly she was more that than the ursoid and vulpine beings that populated
the Regent's personal zoo. But at the same time there was something ethereal and
insubstantial about her, an inhumanness that lurked in the depths of her cobalt
eyes. Twenty feet tall and slender, she clothed her completely hairless form in
a red full-length robe and curious, five-fingered tasseled gloves. Four
emerald-green sensor scarabs that might have been facelike adornments decorated
the robe's bracelike collar and neck closure.
"I told you the Robotech Masters were too clever to
hide the matrix in their own back yard."
"Silence, woman!" the Regent demanded, rising from
the throne.
But the Regis stood her ground. "If you hadn't been so
desperate to prove yourself a great warrior, we might have sent spies to learn
where they've taken it."
The Regent looked at his wife in disbelief. "Are you
forgetting who got us into this predicament in the first place? I'm not the one
who fell under the spell of Zor and allowed him to steal our Flower of
Life."
"Must you keep
harping on that!" the Regis screamed, shutting her eyes and waving her
fists in the air. "It happened a long time ago. And since then I have
evolved, while you've remained the spoiled child you always were. You took his
life; now you won't rest content until you've conquered his empire." She
gestured offhandedly to the Regent's "pets" and caged life-forms.
"You and your dreams of empire...Mark my words, husband, some day these
beings will rise up to strike you down."
The Regent laughed. "Yes, you've evolved-into a
pathetic imitation of the females of Zor's race."
"Perhaps
so," she countered, arms akimbo. "But that's preferable to imitating
the Masters' toys and bloodlust." She turned on her heel and headed for
the door. "I'm returning to Optera."
"Stop! I forbid you to go!" the Regent told her,
furious.
"Don't provoke me," she shouted from the doorway,
"you spineless anachronism!"
"Wait!" the Regent demanded, cursing her. He
whirled around as the door hissed closed, Tirol huge in the room's starboard
viewports. "I'll show, you," he muttered under his breath.
"Tirol will feel my potency...and I'll win back your love."
RN - THE SENTINELS: DEVIL'S HAND
*****
This would be their last face to face. Further down, the Regis will try to justify her reasoning for finally "divorcing" her mate.
There are times where I really feel bad for the snail guy. The Regis did him dirty...and for him...she was the only girl in town.
LOVE SUCKS! LOL!
Much love and kick ass!
John
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