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If she’d been back on Earth, she would have taken a picture and put it on the internet. And then thousands of other people would have come and taken the same picture themselves, and they’d all have tagged it on the internet. She took some comfort in the idea that this place would never be sullied the way so much of her old world was.
Konan had introduced her to many strange and beautiful things, both inside and out. He had also made her accustomed to near total nudity, though she was enjoying the garment the ship had produced for her. It made her feel not only covered, but as though that great intellect which resided inside it was looking out for her.
Everybody had loaded themselves into the ship already. Konan was standing outside it, talking to his first mate. She noticed that the ship was still jacked into the planet itself, thick trunks penetrating the soils, sucking up nutrients and energy from the earth. She could see a slight pumping motion through the trunks as it leeched the planet of its water and whatnot.
“I thought we were leaving.”
Konan turned toward her. She saw frustration written on his features which smoothed out when he looked at her. A warm feeling spread through her chest as she realized that she'd had a positive influence on this once irascible monarch.
“I thought so too. But the ship wishes to remain connected at the moment, and we cannot force it to disengage from the planet.”
“Something you can’t force. Wow.”
“Not now, Elizabeth,” he sighed. “My brother is coming. The usurper king. We will have to face him, and his armies without any avenues of escape. I want you to take some food and water, and hide in the forest until this is over…”
“No.”
“No? You defy me?”
“I don’t defy you. I stand with you,” she lifted her chin and looked at him boldly. “I want to see who betrayed you, and I want to tell him that he’s a huge dick.”
Konan snorted. “You think telling him that he’s a dick will make a difference?”
“Maybe not to him. But to me. I’ll know that I called him a dick, and that will mean I wasn’t completely useless.”
At that moment, there was a very loud noise and an even brighter flash of light. She felt the presence of something very large and heavy nearby, sort of tugging at gravity and light and making it all bend weird. A second later, it straightened itself out and looked normal again — except there was now a very large, very shiny spaceship sitting next to Konan’s.
It didn’t look like Konan’s. It looked like it had been designed by someone who spent way too much time looking at arrows. It was shaped like an arrowhead, all sharp points and angular lines and mean looking windows that squinted out at the world around it. She supposed it looked cool, but only in the sort of way that evil things are sometimes cool.
“Too late to run,” Konan said. “He’s here.”
“Wasn’t planning on running. Never have. Don’t even know how to run,” she said, hiding her nerves with blathering.
A sharp, shiny part of the ship opened up with fanfare. Not with trumpets though. It was more a lo-fi kind of soundscape overlaid with the sound of a hundred hammers hitting tin cans. She did not care for it.
There was a pause, and then a pair of feet became visible at the top of the ramp, followed by the rest of the usurper. She expected to see a bigger, meaner, uglier, nastier version of Konan. Instead, what she saw was a gawky, lean, and yet short male. She supposed he looked somewhat like Konan, but he had none of the gravitas or the sex appeal.
“Hi, Konan. How are you?”
The young alien greeted Konan with what could only be described as sheepishness. He did not have the demeanor of a conqueror. He had the general attitude of a boy who has recently stolen his parents’ car and put it into a ditch.
“Do not use my name. Do not look at me, traitor,” Konan growled.
“Okay. I get it. You’re mad. But it was merely a prank, brother. You must forgive me. It’s gotten so far out of hand. I never thought things would go this far. I thought you’d take the crown back, and reconsider your rule, not go into violent exile.”
Konan scowled so furiously a small tree withered nearby. The entire ship seemed to expand with his anger. The sky above began to darken as clouds rushed to see what was going on down on the ground below, where the fury of a king, long deprived of its proper target, was about to be unleashed.
When Konan spoke, it was with the kind of feral self-control which made everybody who heard his voice feel slightly queasy with fear. Only those with true gravitas could convince the wind itself to die down so that every word could be heard clearly and menacingly.
