“Ray-gun?” Dalox knits his brow, and I shouldn’t think his confusion makes him look young and rather cute.
“You know.” I point the thing away from us. “Pew-pew.”
A beam of light comes out of the thing and blows a hole in the wall. I drop it.
Dalox catches it.
“Something like that,” he rumbles, holding it out to me.
“I think I’ll pass, if you don’t mind.” I continue to stare at the damage I’ve caused, the fizzing of broken electrical connections and a small fire which is snuffed out by multiple small robots who come out of nowhere. They set to work fixing my damage.
“As you wish.” Dalox tucks the ray gun into a bandolier across his chest and gestures to the door. “Perhaps this exit,” he adds. “The one you attempted to make is not operable.”
I think he’s enjoying this.
We make our way through various metal passages, Dalox’s footsteps ringing out behind me, until we reach a large atrium filled with plants. I do a double take, as given this is a space filled with males, a dedication to horticulture isn’t what I would expect.
Which I appreciate is unfair of me. I don’t know anything about the Sarkarnii, other than they turn into dragons and Dalox has absolutely no sense of decorum or how he blusters around stepping on everything with those huge feet.
“This is…nice,” I say.
“The plants help regulate the air and provide water for the aquiums,” Dalox says, moving to walk in step with me. “We are going to a place with many plants. I am glad you like them.”
I recall the screen on which I identified the silvery blob of a space ship in a sea of blues, reds, and greens.
“A forest?”
“And more. The second continent is not habitable other than by the wildlife which fills it.” He gives me a long look as we continue through the atrium and back into the passages. “You may wish to reconsider having a pulsar once you see it.”
“As long as it’s not giant cockroaches,” I respond. “I’m good.”
Dalox narrows his eyes. “I don’t believe there arecuck-roa-chez.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
We continue through an airlock, and I find we’re in the neutral sector again. It’s a short walk before we reach what appears to be a dead end.
Funny place to keep a vessel of any kind.
Dalox looks around, pulls out the pulsar, and fires at the blank wall before I have time to say anything.
He blows a hole in it. Much larger than the one I made earlier. The sound of the explosion reverberates in the huge space.
“One good thing about Dante and his weaponry testing proclivity,” Dalox says as the noise echoes away, “is no one ever questions an explosion in the neutral sector.”
“Why?” I stare at what he’s just done. “Why did you do that?”
“I needed a way in.” Dalox reaches inside the hole he’s made with his huge claws and rips at the metal, making the hole wider.
I see the void behind it.
“A way in where?”
“To the ship.”
I admit, this seems strange, but then I’ve seen stranger. And none of this place belongs to me, so if Dalox feels the need to blow holes in his own home, that’s up to him.
Also, given my earlier inadvertent destruction, I can’t really admonish him for his.
