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I took all of that in, in a flash. Then I was distracted by the sight of several Freytauri hunched over screens.
Freytauri.
Not Iritauri.
Their skin ranged from Danec‘s blue to Slek’s purple and every shade in between. Truthfully, they all looked paler, like the shades were washed out slightly. Spending too much time underground will do that to a person.
"We bring you prisoners," Slek said in a robotic voice. "They helped the specimens escape from the laboratory."
Beside me, Zarex stiffened.
I guess he objected to being called a specimen. Fair enough, it was a shitty term, for sure. It made those people sound like a piece of plant.
One of the Freytauri, a woman with long, dead straight hair, turned slowly to look at us. Her eyes, cold and dead, seemed to look right through me. I had the feeling she thought more highly of pieces of plant.
"You have done well," she said, her voice so monotone she might have been a nanobot herself. "You serve the Tauri Empire well."
Uh-o, that didn't sound good.
"Tauri Empire?" I asked. I didn't think she would answer. You know, me being lower than a plant and all.
She turned to me and blinked slowly. She had lashes so long I wanted to hate her just for that. Straight hair and perfect lashes, everything I never had. I bet her nails were perfectly manicured too, but my eyes never left her face.
"The Freytauri are weak," she said slowly. That was the first sentence she said which had any inflection at all. "Biological life is weak. Enhancing life with technology makes them strong. The Tauri Empire will show the way."
"So, you're trying to make everyone into cyborgs?" I said.
"All life will be better," she stated.
"That's a matter of opinion," I said under my breath. "Can I have a word with the Emperor? He seems to have the wrong idea." I had a suspicion, which she confirmed a moment later when she drew herself up and glared at me.
"There is no Emperor," she hissed. "I am Empress Yinika."
Whatever or whoever she claimed to be, she seemed unhinged to me.
"You will serve the Empire or you will die." The other Freytauri had turned from their screens and stood beside her now.
"Do they all agree with your vision?" I nodded toward the closest of them.
"If they do not, they will become hosts," Yinika stated.
More than one Freytauri licked their lips or shuffled their feet.
"Surely they want that?" J'avet asked, addressing them. "To be enhanced. To be better."
"They will achieve that," Yinika said.
"When you learn how to control the nanobots without them," J'avet guessed. "Or can control them separately."
"That's not so hard," Slek said with a grin. He stretched his arms out to either side.
Yinika looked at him in shock. Clearly she hadn't expected us to figure out how to separate hosts from the hive.
"How—"
The Freytauri around her looked terrified.
I might have felt sorry for them, but they were in this up to their eyeballs.
