The Sea is Full of Stars

Underwater Zone Gate, Later That Same Day

Colonel General Sochiz of Cromlin was feeling cocky and arrogant as he left the embassy and made his way through the crowds toward the Well Gate, pushing aside anybody who did not yield and barely paying attention to the stares. He did not care what anybody thought of him, and his great claws could cut steel rods if he were so inclined.

Josich would be so proud of him! The way they had looked as he had spoken! The way they had simply melted away as he’d strode off the platform and through the hall and out. That was fear, fear of power, and it felt most excellent.

When it was clear who he was, the others along the route to the Well Gate gave way and no one, not even those who were larger and looked meaner than he, impeded his triumphal march.

He turned the corner and saw the utter blackness of the Gate directly ahead, its hexagonal shape unmistakable. He was almost to it when he realized that, for this last, short stretch, there was nobody in the corridor.

He stopped suddenly, suspicious. This was the way assassins worked. Well, let them come! Let them see he was not afraid of them!

A noise caused him to turn to the wall to his right, perhaps five meters in front of the Gate. It had no form at first, but then took a humanoid shape that seemed to extrude right out of the wall. It looked like nothing even research had shown him, like a moving idol from some primitive tribe, made completely of dull, rough granitelike stone, a car-toonish, idiotic, and simplified face carved into it. Only the eyes said it was something more, the burning fire-orange eyes in the tranquil water, and the fact that it walked to him.

“Who are you who would block we?” the Cromlin general shouted. Both of Sochiz’s forward claws went up. One snatched at the creature while the tail reared up and the syringelike point at the end struck at its head.

And broke off.

The creature reached up and, with a stony hand, held the claw immobile, then it grabbed the other as the pain of losing the stinger hit the Cromlin’s body, ripping off the right claw and discarding it.

“You know my name,” the creature said in a tone that could only mean it had a translator. “Let it be the last thing you or any of your brothers hear.”

“What name?” the creature screamed. “Who are you?”

“Jeremiah Wong Kincaid,” came the reply, just before the second claw was ripped away and the stone right hand of the idol-like creature punched through the face of the Cromlin right between the protruding eyes and extended antennae, and just kept going all the way into the brain.

It was a slow and messy way to die. The thing was still wriggling in its death throes long after Kincaid had stepped through the Gate and when the first of the curious traffic that had held up for now dared to look around and see what had happened, but not who the perpetrator might have been.