Imperator (Galaxy's Edge Book 5) by Nick Cole & Jason Anspach

Author:Nick Cole & Jason Anspach [Cole, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Galaxy's Edge LLC
Published: 2018-01-14T22:00:00+00:00

Part Two

The Desert in Which

You Must Come to the

End of Yourself

Chapter Twenty-Two

That night they made camp beneath the statue. THK-133 had gathered dead wood to make a fire while Casper sat beneath a survival blanket. His body felt drained, his mind cottony and distant, as though it had been through a great sickness and had only just survived. In other words… he felt thin.

There was little food left in his ruck, and THK-133’s pack carried only charge packs for the heavy blaster. This was odd, because Casper remembered loading that pack with survival rations.

The state of Casper’s gear was a question unto itself. Many things were simply missing. Some were not. There was no rhyme nor reason as to why one piece of equipment had survived the trek through the jungle and another had disappeared. Try as he might to remember what had happened in the jungle, Casper could find nothing in his mind to give him a coherent picture of the journey. His boots had been ravaged. His pants were muddy and torn. His shirt had been so badly ruined through sweat and damage that he’d used it as kindling to start the fire that night. He had only the jacket now. That had remained strangely pristine, folded and strapped to the top of his ruck. For all the damage everything else had taken, the heavy-duty survival jacket looked like it hadn’t even gone on the terrible journey that had brought them beneath the glare of the desert statue.

The hunting blaster rifle was gone too. And he had no memory of losing it.

He looked at THK-133. The bot merely stared into the fire. Urmo had caught some desert rat and was busy skinning it in the darkness away from the fire.

“How long?” Casper croaked. From the sound of his voice, he guessed he hadn’t used it much in the time he’d been under the influence of the strange mushrooms. Or perhaps he’d screamed and screamed it into uselessness.

The bot swiveled its head mechanically, landing its gaze on Casper.

“Ah, you can speak coherently again, master. Excellent. This is quite a change from your constant nonsensical raving and general lunacy. I look forward to a return to your more lucid conversations, which I have occasionally enjoyed.”

Raving.

Casper drank some water. He still had the canteen. It didn’t cool things now—somehow it had malfunctioned with regard to only that one feature—but even the tepid water felt good on his raw throat.

Little Urmo returned with the spitted rat. It had two heads. The tiny creature thrust it into the fire with evil delight and watched the flames leap up around it, muttering its one, oft-repeated word over and over to itself.

“Raving?” Casper asked. His voice was still hoarse.

“Yes, raving,” answered the bot drolly.

Pause.

“What I was I raving about?”

“Oh… everything. You gave a running commentary of everything we saw. Often objectifying trees or rocks and turning them into persons. You had cute names for them. It was like going on a long walk with a primeval tribesman who explained everything with the catchall word ‘magic.

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