Chapter Eighteen (1/2)

Speaks in Loud Spaces sat in the fifth contemplative position, his legs folded next to his abdomen, his vestigial blade limbs pulled up in what humans called 'prayer', his grasping hands folding at where his thorax met his long abdomen. His antenna quivered softly, sampling the emotions of those around him and keeping contact on his little ones.

All those around him except his two guards. He could hear them, even though he was able to exclude them through long training and a quirk of genetics and growth jelly.

Where the Council was either the mental equivalent of a dial tone or confused whiplashing emotions overlaid with fear, suspicion, resignation, or avarice, two minds growled and snarled in the emotional equivalent of running a mandible file across one's antenna, warning and threatening ”keep out” with a large portion of what humans called ”get fucked” for good measure.

But Speaks was used to that. He had been dealing with humans since he had left the quiet solace of the Chambers of the Elder Sleepers.

In a way, it was comforting. Like being covered in a suit of hissing spiders that spit bees.

He had never been around equals before.

His multifaceted eyes were blind but he still watched the councilbeings surrounding him, the design of his little ones allowing him to lift their triangular heads and view a complete 360 degrees around him.

Even beyond their wild gesticulating, he could sense their emotions, hear the thread of their inner voices, feel the emotions they hid from everyone else.

Speaks was saddened at how many of them lacked an inner voice.

After a while the council's outrage was spent and the final protestor sputtered slowly to silence.

Speaks reached out to his Speaker, meshing his thoughts with its tiny mind. It welcomed him, happiness radiating out from it as it raised itself up, ready to snatch words and thoughts and meanings from sounds.

”Do you need more time to discuss things among once another? Your outrage has only killed a few million, do you need time to increase this august conclave's body count?” the Speaker trilled.

The chamber exploded in rage again.

Speaks didn't care.

Every moment he could hear untold scrying out in fear and agony before going silent.

To Speaks it was as if stars were going out in the sky.

Despair, the little black mantid, whispered to him across their interwoven thoughts.

any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.

it quoted to him. An ancient Terran poem that raged against what this very council was so enamored with. The poem inscribed at the base of the statue on TerraSol known as ”Do you need assistance?”

Speaks let his mind drift, taking comfort in the snarling rage growling and snapping from his two honor guards. He knew that, should these beings attempt to raise their hands against him, they would protect them with their very lives, dying in pieces to protect them and shield them from the violence that so terrified his people.

The violence within him as it was within the Terrans.

Do these beings understand such a thing? Speaks asked himself.

The little alabaster one told him that nay, they cannot, they can only see what their grasping hands can snatch close, ignorant of the bladearms of others.

She could see more clearly than he could through his hunger.

Finally the outrage died down again. He paid no attention to any of it, instead, reaching out and tasting their various emotions, having the green little one commit to memory which ones he would seek out privately in their chambers away from prying eyes.

”No matter what words and sentiments you cast upon me like chaff upon the wind it does not change the simple fact that you cannot defeat them, cannot save any of your species from the Precursors,” He said through the little russet Speaker.

Again the council chamber exploded.

A fantasy of climbing onto the podium that one being with a large head was banging upon, striking down in the perfect clean strike, pulling the being upward as it screeched, grabbing it with his grasping hands, bringing his jaws down upon its skull, cracking it, crushing it, sheering through flesh and bone to find...

His cybernetic implants shocked him.

Not that anyone would have noticed that faint wingflutter at the edge of one of his vestigial wings.

Both his honor guards powered up their weapons, targeting Speaks, then released their omnitargeting linkages and let the power trickle from their weapons as Speaks was calmed by his prosthetic.

The little green one rubbed its bladearms together and scraped them through its mandibles at the way the Terran's minds sharpened and focused on the five before the gentle current from the prosthetic calmed it.

The council thought it was just cleaning itself out of primitive instinct.

They had no idea how close the Grand Unified Council chamber and beyond came to being a slaughterhouse.

Speaks relaxed, cleaning his bladearms slowly, licking along their blunted edges, cleaning them with intricate care, as if they had never been altered by genemods from their razor sharp beautiful lethality.

For a split second he had an image of the heavy warborg on his right holding him into the air by his throat, its other arm drawn back with a piston-like fist clenched and aimed at his head as his graspinghands held the Terran by the throat and his bladearms slashed through its warsteel armor, both of them locked in a death embrace, coolant spilling from the warborg as ichor leaked from Speaks armored neck, the two of them...

the light electric shock was a hush to his mind. In the aftershocks his mind sampled and tasted the minds surrounding him.

He could silence them all in an instant, he knew it. He could simply reach out and snuff their minds, stop their thoughts, freeze their muscles, hold them silent in place, even still their heartbeats. Let his thoughts ripple out from this chamber throughout the building, stilling the thoughts of the inhabitants, stripping away their thoughts and memories and emotions, devouring them into his own overmind in his abdomen, his mind rippling out across the very city, taking control of their bodies once he devoured their minds...

Except that would cause

glorious fight to the death with the two warborgs who's minds would bellow in rage as they instinctively attacked him. Glorious glorious combat with a mind that could withstand the punishing assault of his will and

the shock made him quiver and his little ones go still.

The warborgs didn't let the charge trickle from the weapons back into the power pack, instead they left their weapons charged.

The metallic KACHUNKALACK! that sounded from the two borgs as they loaded their rifles and the cannons on their backs stilled the entire council chamber. Many beings quailed and cringed back as the two massive cannons slowly rotated up the backs, trailing 60mm belt-fed collapsed density depleted uranium shells jacketing unstable deuterium, moving slowly over the shoulder to point at...