Cry of War: A Military Space Adventure Series by R. L. Giddings

Author:R. L. Giddings [Giddings, R. L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-05-06T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

By the time Webster arrived at the dining room to meet Dalbiri, their dinner had already been served.

The food looked enticing enough - chicken pie with heaps of mashed potato and corn - but when he took his first bite it was hard not show his disappointment. The food had a not unpleasant chemical taste to it but he imagined that if he closed his eyes he wouldn’t be able to say that it was chicken that he was eating. Its texture had more in common with some beef substitutes he’d experienced.

None of this seemed to have occurred to Dalbiri who was happily tucking into his food.

“You enjoying that?” Webster said after a while.

“Yeah. Hot and filling,” Dalbiri said. “Just the way I like it.”

Webster continued to eat for a while but, without the sensory feedback of the different flavors, he quickly lost interest and gave up.

“I’m surprised to see you’re still here,” he said. “Thought you might be off somewhere with Maria.”

Dalbiri grimaced at the mere mention of her name. “Yeah, I was meaning to say something about that.”

“Go on,” Webster prompted, sensing a change in Dalbiri’s demeanour. “What’s wrong?”

Dalbiri put his cutlery down. “It’s a bit embarrassing to say it but I think I might have been mistaken. About Maria and everything.”

“That’s interesting. What’s prompted all this?”

“I don’t know. At the time, it all seemed so real. She’d aged and everything. But now I’m not so sure.”

“I get it,” Webster said, though secretly he was delighted that the other man had come to his senses. “We’ve been under a lot of stress lately. Only natural that our brain copes with it in different ways.”

The sense of relief that he was no longer having to deal with this situation on his own was acute and he immediately decided to tell Dalbiri everything he’d learned so far about the relationship between the Anjharan Da’al and the Drasin.

“Sort of figures, I guess,” Dalbiri said once he’d finished. “They’d be keen for any opportunity to overthrow their old masters.”

“Only now that the Da’al have finally tracked them down, it seems that the Drasin have somehow managed to regain their technological edge. And now they’re on their way to hunt down another Da’al ship. Seems that this feud could go on and on.”

And here they were, caught in the middle of things.

Webster waited until Dalbiri had finished eating before speaking again. He wanted to get Dalbiri’s take on the conversation he’d overheard between The Pilot and the other unidentified sub-mind.

“Don’t you think that’s odd?”

Dalbiri pushed his empty plate to one side.

“Actually, I do,” he said, his eyes sharp and bright. “I think I know who this other guy might be. The one with the ponytail. I met him briefly. Said his name was The Engineer.”

“Yeah, that figures.”

“So, that’s three sub-minds accounted for,” Dalbiri was starting to sound more like himself again. It was like someone emerging from a fog. “Which kinda begs the question: what’s happened to the other three. I certainly haven’t seen them.

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