Read Star Force: Revulsion (SF70) Online
Authors: Aer-ki Jyr
Kip knelt down until he
sat on his ankles and stared up into the glowing face, daring him to look back
but he wouldn’t. He just sat there mumbling, either unaware of Kip being inches
away or deliberately avoiding acknowledgement.
Well, as long as he’s sitting here I will too
, Kip said as he stood
up and walked to the opposite bench and had a seat.
I’m going to have a thorough look around his head, then meet up with
you guys for the next interrogation session. You up or someone else?
Mike is. His psionics aren’t that good, but he’s got a personal stake
in this. We’ve also got a couple of Ikrid specialists to help out. I had my
shift this morning. Greg will take the last of the day.
You heading for a workout?
I was going to get you up to speed first.
Go ahead. I’ll find my own way from here.
A bit of advice
, Jason warned.
Don’t
do anything to tick them off, no matter what kind of memories you stumble
across.
That bad?
Sick is the word. I don’t like digging through that crap, but we need
intel
. Don’t let them see you get angry. They still think
we’re here to save them.
Understood.
Jason walked off and
left the two of them alone, still with no reaction from the Protovic, as Kip
began a memory search. The different mental structure took him a while to
adjust to, but after that it was no different than the memory searches he’d
made of ADZ Protovic in past years. That familiarity let him dig deeply right
off the bat, though without a language translation a lot of the man’s thoughts
were a mucky mess.
Some of the first
memories he went to were of the sacrifices, wondering what this one thought
about them. Kip saw him observing many from his place in a crowd, and the
feelings that accompanied them turned the Archon’s stomach. He was actually
convinced that the horrific pain and agony of their deaths was a good thing,
upping the
Veliquesh’s
standing in the Nash, and that
the more resistance an individual gave, the more intense their destruction,
resulted in a greater reward.
This Protovic actually
relished in the agony and betrayal of those he witnessed being sacrificed, all
the time knowing that it could happen to him to at some point. Rather than see
that as a problem this one ignored it. He was one of the people benefiting from
their demise, and it was almost a joke to him. The people he was seeing
sacrificed had thought it would never happen to them, and now it was, with that
horrific response all the more savory. He actually relished their screams and
the scent of their incinerated blood and flesh, for what was a person had now
been taken and consumed like fuel…and that visceral trade that he knew by
nature was not supposed to happen, that was fundamentally wrong, would be
compensated by a blessing in the Nash.
A wrong had to be done
in order to receive the counterbalance, and the more wrong they could heap on
the sacrificial slaughter the sweeter the recompense.
Kip realized that the
ones groomed from birth to be the purest of sacrifices were not told of their
purpose, so that when it did come the outrage and defiance would be intact and
they’d go to their deaths in the utmost betrayal in order to fuel their
position in the Nash with the greatest compensation.
Jason was right in that
Kip wanted to Vader choke this bastard right here and now, but the Archon
steadied himself and forced his emotions within the barrier of his skin, not
letting anything show on the outside as he continued to dig into the man’s
memories until he could stomach no more and had to take a break.
When he stood up the
Protovic finally opened his eyes and looked up at him, speaking to him in words
that Kip could not understand.
Channeling his anger
into irony Kip turned back and looked at him, smiling and speaking in the
nicest of tones.
“Hello, my name is
Inigo
Montoya. You’ve killed far too many people, and now
that we know where you and your
Sith
buddies live, prepare for your entire civilization to die.”