Undiscovered Territory
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: The Gathered
For a second, Doctor Gneiss had thought that the child had not been properly sedated; he had twitched when she had turned on the machine. But it could just as easily been the natural jerking of a body when such force was applied to it, whether or not it was conscious. That had to be it, for no more movements came after the initial one. Everything was normal and under control.
She checked the readings on the machine's built-in computer, and frowned curiously. Perhaps things were not so normal after all. The deep tissue scans just didn't pan out the way that she had thought they would. She had expected them to show a great toughness and a startlingly high level of regeneration cells, but the reading that she was getting showed nothing particularly special about them. So much for that theory about the ultra- regenerative flesh . . .
A few seconds later, she blinked, and gestured toward her assistant. "Scree. Deactivate this for a moment."
Doctor Gneiss heard her assistant sigh at this, and knew that it was in relief. That man got too attached to the test subjects, and never enjoyed doing the deeper scans as they were doing now. And the subjects were even knocked out for this, so she really wasn't sure where this reluctance came in; if he were worried about them, he should not be, for they didn't feel the pain while they were unconscious. Honestly, she wondered sometimes why he had decided to become a scientist. He obviously didn't have the stomach for it.
But in all truth, she paid little attention to the relief of her assistant. Instead, she circled toward the open end of the tube as the table slid out from it. Hmm. Nothing seemed out of place. The child was pale, had his eyes closed, signs that he had been properly sedated. So perhaps that unfamiliar light that she had seen within the tube had been on the part of the equipment.
That light had looked strangely similar to the aura that she'd thought she had seen around this child after she had finished with the smaller one. A soft, glowing yellow in contrast to the harsh, flashing blue of the scanner. When she'd demanded an answer out of the child, he had claimed not to know what she was talking about. But she hadn't believed him. Whatever that aura was, the child must have called upon it of his own will; since he was sedated, it was impossible to think that he had generated it here
Straightening, Doctor Gneiss sighed in annoyance. Now her experiments would be on hold until she repaired the problem with the scanner. She simply had the worst luck – her subjects were uncooperative in the lab, they had attempted to escape on her (the one that had did annoy her to some degree, but that was the less interesting one anyway), and now her equipment started breaking down.
"I'm going to have to take a closer look at this," she said at last, taking a pair of white gloves out of a drawer. "Put the kid back into the other room until I'm done."
She narrowed her eyes curiously at the child one more time as Scree undid the straps from his body. She could have sworn that the glow had come from him, but there was no way that could be the case. The sedation had been proper, even if it had taken longer than she had expected.
But none of this was important now. As Scree carried the child out of the room, she knelt down and opened a panel on the scanner.
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They hadn't even made it back to the ship yet before they ran into Pumice. The man turned his head away, but anger and shame were easily readable in his eyes. He had obviously acquired some great failure to his credit and was ready to find out his punishment.
Basalt frowned at this. First things first: he needed to know what this failure was. "Well, scout? Care to inform me of just how you screwed up this time?"
To Pumice's credit, he raised his head and looked Basalt in the eye. "I'd just come out of the regen tank, commander, when the ship's alarms went off – those little brats we caught got out of Doctor Gneiss' lab somehow."
This statement got Basalt's attention, and his brows lifted slightly. Much as the Namek species annoyed him, escaping Doctor Gneiss' lab was quite the feat for a grown man much less a pair of kids. He was rather impressed.
"I managed to intercept one of them in the hall," Pumice continued in a voice that did not trail off; rather, it simmered with anger, "but he got lucky and made an escape through a broken window. I haven't been able to find him since."
"I see," Basalt said after a moment. What to do about the man before him? Really, the loss of a couple of children, however irritating that might be, was paltry. The kids didn't matter to him at all. Still, to be outsmarted by a pair of alien kids was indeed a shameful thing. Basalt knew that most of his underlings were pretty incompetent, but he had never expected this level out of them. How he underestimated his lessers, sometimes
Straightening further, Basalt readjusted the Dragonball under his arm. He liked the feel of it there; it was a certain sense of empowerment. "Well, scout, seeing as I'm in somewhat of a lenient mood right now, I don't think that this is the best time to define your punishment. Just head back to the ship and I shall decide upon it later."
Pumice did not offer up a single word to that. The man merely nodded once and turned back toward the ship, manner wholly professional once again. Hard to believe that such a manner belonged to someone who bungled things so easily.
Basalt didn't spare a breath to command the rest of his crew; he simply continued forward again, along the same path that Pumice had taken, and the rest followed suit. Yes, he would figure out what to do with his underling later. At the moment, all he had to worry about was ensuring that all of the Dragonballs had been gathered. That much he should know within the next couple of hours.
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The message, sent directly from one mind to another, arrived clearly and was accepted without question. First in one village, then in another and another. All were in agreement upon the task, for they had all suffered a raid and had their Dragonballs stolen. In some villages, many of the residents had been killed, while in others it was the raiders that suffered the greater losses. Nevertheless, every pack of them, against the odds, had managed to achieve their true goal.
Nobody needed to be reminded of the old planet to know that something horrible was on the rise unless their warriors could find some way to stop it. There was no hesitation.
And thus from each village, under the order of Great Elder Muuri, a triad was assembled. Had anyone been around to observe the skies, he would have noticed the auras of pale blue ki merged into one like a living arrowhead. He would have noticed that they all shot straight and true toward a single point in an attempt to rendezvous with another such arrowhead, one that had been on the move before any of the others.
But there were no observers, of course. Not now, and hopefully not before they arrived at their destination. They could ill allow things to go forward as they were and having the element of surprise would be a most welcome advantage.
By everything they held most holy, the Nameks would not fall again.
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As if he hadn't been frightened enough before, when he had waited for a while and Dende had still not appeared, Scargo was well terrified now. Several pairs of legs descended into his view; obviously a lot of the aliens had been off doing something while he and Dende had been trying to escape. Scargo immediately worried for his people, but that worrying almost choked him at the next sight that greeted his eyes.
Dropped to the ground, and almost casually rolling a short distance, was a Dragonball. And his fears grew as he scooted forward the slightest bit to count the number of stars in it. Four of them. No more, no less. This was the Dragonball from his village.
A chill swept through Scargo at this. Had this been the aliens' plan all along? Was everyone back home all right? For a second, Scargo thought that he felt the ground shaking under him, but quickly realized that the motion was coming from his own body. Stubbornly, he steadied himself, trying to be brave even in the face of fear as he had seen Dende do before they were separated.
Dende . . . It wasn't a pleasant thought, but Scargo could not keep himself from believing that his older brother had gotten caught again. He must have been hiding under this ship for quite some time, and he was sure that Dende would have waited a short while for him had he been the first one to come out.
Scargo frowned at himself. He should have left this place earlier. Now he couldn't for he was certain that the aliens that had just arrived would catch him if he even tried.
And he didn't have any more time to think about escape at the moment. More legs dropped into his vision, and another Dragonball rolled across the ground. A few minutes later, the sight repeated itself once again . . .
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The world was all a haze now, and in all truth, he did not put that much effort into resolving the images that meant nothing at all to him. It would simply be too much of an effort, and his mind was too weary to care, yet somehow not quite weary enough to sink fully into the seas of unconsciousness. What kept him afloat, he did not know, for he felt no inner urging, no deep-seated need to keep himself awake. As far as he could tell, there was no reason.
And the fogginess was almost pleasant in a way; it gave everything a rounder, softer edge, something that he had been in dire need of either a short or a long while ago – his sense of time was off kilter inside him – when he remembered some terrible pain.
That pain had torn through his body, searing into every nerve he knew he had and also the ones that he didn't. It was everywhere and all consuming, if only for a moment. This was not the moment where he lost consciousness; he knew this instinctively. And his instincts were what had spared him any extra agony inside of that machine. With little thought on his part, he had called upon his healing aura to protect him from harm. Something which only hours or days ago had been a difficult task for him, he suddenly performed well when he was just half conscious. Not that it had blocked all of the pain, but it did do so for a great deal of it, and he had been able to tolerate the rest.
Rest . . . That's what he was getting now, though he knew not why. His tormentor had surely not felt suddenly guilty of her actions and spontaneously decided to discontinue her experiments. Perhaps her kinder- hearted assistant had persuaded her away from this method of experimentation, even for just a while. It was a nice thought. A comforting one. He was in need of one of those now, to soothe somewhat his nerves concerning his brother.
Honestly, he could not tell if Scargo was in the room with him now. He couldn't see properly, his ears felt plugged and he couldn't even feel the floor under his back much less a reassuring hand upon his arm. But whether Scargo was there or not, the worry remained. For if Scargo was here, he worried that he might be forced to undergo the same agony, and if he were not, then it was the high odds against reaching the village again.
Still, had Scargo truly escaped, then he was happy. Better for the elder to endure all things horrible; the young should not have any such experience thrust upon their souls. Whatever his outcome here, he could be safe in the knowledge that his brother had escaped. That is, if he had any clue about it.
Normally, this kind of worry would have crushed him, but the same fogginess that blurred his vision also dulled his emotions. It was somewhat amazing that he was able to feel any at all at this point. When a head felt like this, he was sure that no feeling could enter it, though he supposed that he should not judge. After all, if thoughts could pierce the haze, why not feelings? They were usually the stronger thing, or so the elders had always said. He had no reason to disbelieve them.
But all of these thoughts were extremely wearying and so took an exacting toll upon his weakened body. With no reason that he could think of to spare the effort it now took to stay awake, he simply let himself drift away into the darkness.
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A part of Scargo suddenly wished that he did not know how to count. If he hadn't then perhaps he would not be so worried as he was now, for the number that entered his head, was absorbed by his eyes was not one that he was particularly glad to see in a situation like this.
Seven. The number of stars within one of the objects before him and the total number of those particular objects. These aliens . . . how did they . . . and so quickly? Nobody could gather all of the Dragonballs that quickly unless there was a consensus among the elders that they were needed and then the appropriate measures were taken. Outsiders managing this just did not make any sense to him whatsoever.
But never mind the fact that it made no sense to him. The point was that it had happened. And the question was whether he could or even should try to do anything about this. There was a part of him that wanted to be a hero, to live up to the great example that was Dende, but Scargo didn't have the courage for that. The bigger part of him wanted to stay right here under this ship where so far nobody had detected him, or to fly home to safety. Even so . . . if these aliens got their wishes, then who knew what would happen? The last time that an outside force had come after the Dragonballs, the result was the destruction of the entire planet.
Scargo could not stop a little whimper at this thought, and he abruptly covered his mouth with both hands. What if somebody had heard him? For several minutes he lay flat on his stomach, eyes glued to the numerous pairs of legs that he could see from his vantage point, waiting for the sure sign that he had been discovered.
The sign did not come, and Scargo was relaxed enough to actually let out a big sigh of relief. The aliens hadn't heard him because of the sound of their own voices, talking about something that he had missed in his terror of being discovered.
He attuned his ears more closely to the several conversations, trying to pick out specific words. This was not an easy task at first, since there were so many voices through which to sort. But he eventually was able to follow, and he listened carefully to all of the statements made. And at them, he had to smile.
These aliens didn't know how to use the Dragonballs.
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"Would all of you shut up?" Basalt snapped, glaring over his shoulder at his underlings; they stopped arguing immediately, withering at his expression. He made it very clear that he was in a bad mood and was as likely to kill somebody at this moment as fire off an order. "There is a way to make these things work; I doubt that Lord Frieza would ever have bothered with them otherwise."
And this was true, for Lord Frieza did not go to backward planets on whims. Nameksei had been such a backwater planet, so he must have known that whatever legend pertained to these balls held truth somewhere in its telling. Despite the fact that he had never gotten the wish, he may well have discovered the secret.
Rumours travelled quickly, even from planet to planet. Tough his crew had been far away from the main world, stories easily passed into various checkpoints and refuelling stations. One end of the galaxy to the other, or simply between planets in the same solar system, it just did not matter. A good rumour would be all over the empire in a matter of several months, rather than several years. And any recent rumour involving Lord Frieza was a good one indeed.
When Lord Frieza had been found, body halved and floating through space, he had muttered only a few phrases over and over. One of them was, "Monkey . . . He was just a monkey . . ." But the other one was different, and far more intriguing, especially regarding Basalt's current situation.
"In the native tongue . . ."
Basalt's head lifted abruptly, and a smile, as dark and malicious a one as he had ever managed in his lifetime worked its way onto his lips. Had any of his underlings seen this, they might have fainted in fright.
That was the key. The Namekians' native language. And it just so happened that he had two natives at his disposal in the ship. He frowned for a moment. Or at least he had. Thanks to the incompetence of Pumice, both of those little brats might have escaped, and his chance could be ruined.
Well. He would have to investigate this personally, as it was clear that his underlings were incapable of such an undertaking. Sharply, he turned around and gave them a curt order. "The lot of you stay here. Stand guard over these, as I surely hope even incompetents such as you can manage. I will be back shortly."
His underlings parted for him as he passed, heading for the ship. It was about time for him to pay another visit to Doctor Gneiss, this time to borrow one of her test subjects, assuming that she still had any. And if she did not, then he would find some other way to get what he wanted.
He was too close to his desire not to get it now.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: The Gathered
For a second, Doctor Gneiss had thought that the child had not been properly sedated; he had twitched when she had turned on the machine. But it could just as easily been the natural jerking of a body when such force was applied to it, whether or not it was conscious. That had to be it, for no more movements came after the initial one. Everything was normal and under control.
She checked the readings on the machine's built-in computer, and frowned curiously. Perhaps things were not so normal after all. The deep tissue scans just didn't pan out the way that she had thought they would. She had expected them to show a great toughness and a startlingly high level of regeneration cells, but the reading that she was getting showed nothing particularly special about them. So much for that theory about the ultra- regenerative flesh . . .
A few seconds later, she blinked, and gestured toward her assistant. "Scree. Deactivate this for a moment."
Doctor Gneiss heard her assistant sigh at this, and knew that it was in relief. That man got too attached to the test subjects, and never enjoyed doing the deeper scans as they were doing now. And the subjects were even knocked out for this, so she really wasn't sure where this reluctance came in; if he were worried about them, he should not be, for they didn't feel the pain while they were unconscious. Honestly, she wondered sometimes why he had decided to become a scientist. He obviously didn't have the stomach for it.
But in all truth, she paid little attention to the relief of her assistant. Instead, she circled toward the open end of the tube as the table slid out from it. Hmm. Nothing seemed out of place. The child was pale, had his eyes closed, signs that he had been properly sedated. So perhaps that unfamiliar light that she had seen within the tube had been on the part of the equipment.
That light had looked strangely similar to the aura that she'd thought she had seen around this child after she had finished with the smaller one. A soft, glowing yellow in contrast to the harsh, flashing blue of the scanner. When she'd demanded an answer out of the child, he had claimed not to know what she was talking about. But she hadn't believed him. Whatever that aura was, the child must have called upon it of his own will; since he was sedated, it was impossible to think that he had generated it here
Straightening, Doctor Gneiss sighed in annoyance. Now her experiments would be on hold until she repaired the problem with the scanner. She simply had the worst luck – her subjects were uncooperative in the lab, they had attempted to escape on her (the one that had did annoy her to some degree, but that was the less interesting one anyway), and now her equipment started breaking down.
"I'm going to have to take a closer look at this," she said at last, taking a pair of white gloves out of a drawer. "Put the kid back into the other room until I'm done."
She narrowed her eyes curiously at the child one more time as Scree undid the straps from his body. She could have sworn that the glow had come from him, but there was no way that could be the case. The sedation had been proper, even if it had taken longer than she had expected.
But none of this was important now. As Scree carried the child out of the room, she knelt down and opened a panel on the scanner.
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They hadn't even made it back to the ship yet before they ran into Pumice. The man turned his head away, but anger and shame were easily readable in his eyes. He had obviously acquired some great failure to his credit and was ready to find out his punishment.
Basalt frowned at this. First things first: he needed to know what this failure was. "Well, scout? Care to inform me of just how you screwed up this time?"
To Pumice's credit, he raised his head and looked Basalt in the eye. "I'd just come out of the regen tank, commander, when the ship's alarms went off – those little brats we caught got out of Doctor Gneiss' lab somehow."
This statement got Basalt's attention, and his brows lifted slightly. Much as the Namek species annoyed him, escaping Doctor Gneiss' lab was quite the feat for a grown man much less a pair of kids. He was rather impressed.
"I managed to intercept one of them in the hall," Pumice continued in a voice that did not trail off; rather, it simmered with anger, "but he got lucky and made an escape through a broken window. I haven't been able to find him since."
"I see," Basalt said after a moment. What to do about the man before him? Really, the loss of a couple of children, however irritating that might be, was paltry. The kids didn't matter to him at all. Still, to be outsmarted by a pair of alien kids was indeed a shameful thing. Basalt knew that most of his underlings were pretty incompetent, but he had never expected this level out of them. How he underestimated his lessers, sometimes
Straightening further, Basalt readjusted the Dragonball under his arm. He liked the feel of it there; it was a certain sense of empowerment. "Well, scout, seeing as I'm in somewhat of a lenient mood right now, I don't think that this is the best time to define your punishment. Just head back to the ship and I shall decide upon it later."
Pumice did not offer up a single word to that. The man merely nodded once and turned back toward the ship, manner wholly professional once again. Hard to believe that such a manner belonged to someone who bungled things so easily.
Basalt didn't spare a breath to command the rest of his crew; he simply continued forward again, along the same path that Pumice had taken, and the rest followed suit. Yes, he would figure out what to do with his underling later. At the moment, all he had to worry about was ensuring that all of the Dragonballs had been gathered. That much he should know within the next couple of hours.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------
The message, sent directly from one mind to another, arrived clearly and was accepted without question. First in one village, then in another and another. All were in agreement upon the task, for they had all suffered a raid and had their Dragonballs stolen. In some villages, many of the residents had been killed, while in others it was the raiders that suffered the greater losses. Nevertheless, every pack of them, against the odds, had managed to achieve their true goal.
Nobody needed to be reminded of the old planet to know that something horrible was on the rise unless their warriors could find some way to stop it. There was no hesitation.
And thus from each village, under the order of Great Elder Muuri, a triad was assembled. Had anyone been around to observe the skies, he would have noticed the auras of pale blue ki merged into one like a living arrowhead. He would have noticed that they all shot straight and true toward a single point in an attempt to rendezvous with another such arrowhead, one that had been on the move before any of the others.
But there were no observers, of course. Not now, and hopefully not before they arrived at their destination. They could ill allow things to go forward as they were and having the element of surprise would be a most welcome advantage.
By everything they held most holy, the Nameks would not fall again.
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As if he hadn't been frightened enough before, when he had waited for a while and Dende had still not appeared, Scargo was well terrified now. Several pairs of legs descended into his view; obviously a lot of the aliens had been off doing something while he and Dende had been trying to escape. Scargo immediately worried for his people, but that worrying almost choked him at the next sight that greeted his eyes.
Dropped to the ground, and almost casually rolling a short distance, was a Dragonball. And his fears grew as he scooted forward the slightest bit to count the number of stars in it. Four of them. No more, no less. This was the Dragonball from his village.
A chill swept through Scargo at this. Had this been the aliens' plan all along? Was everyone back home all right? For a second, Scargo thought that he felt the ground shaking under him, but quickly realized that the motion was coming from his own body. Stubbornly, he steadied himself, trying to be brave even in the face of fear as he had seen Dende do before they were separated.
Dende . . . It wasn't a pleasant thought, but Scargo could not keep himself from believing that his older brother had gotten caught again. He must have been hiding under this ship for quite some time, and he was sure that Dende would have waited a short while for him had he been the first one to come out.
Scargo frowned at himself. He should have left this place earlier. Now he couldn't for he was certain that the aliens that had just arrived would catch him if he even tried.
And he didn't have any more time to think about escape at the moment. More legs dropped into his vision, and another Dragonball rolled across the ground. A few minutes later, the sight repeated itself once again . . .
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The world was all a haze now, and in all truth, he did not put that much effort into resolving the images that meant nothing at all to him. It would simply be too much of an effort, and his mind was too weary to care, yet somehow not quite weary enough to sink fully into the seas of unconsciousness. What kept him afloat, he did not know, for he felt no inner urging, no deep-seated need to keep himself awake. As far as he could tell, there was no reason.
And the fogginess was almost pleasant in a way; it gave everything a rounder, softer edge, something that he had been in dire need of either a short or a long while ago – his sense of time was off kilter inside him – when he remembered some terrible pain.
That pain had torn through his body, searing into every nerve he knew he had and also the ones that he didn't. It was everywhere and all consuming, if only for a moment. This was not the moment where he lost consciousness; he knew this instinctively. And his instincts were what had spared him any extra agony inside of that machine. With little thought on his part, he had called upon his healing aura to protect him from harm. Something which only hours or days ago had been a difficult task for him, he suddenly performed well when he was just half conscious. Not that it had blocked all of the pain, but it did do so for a great deal of it, and he had been able to tolerate the rest.
Rest . . . That's what he was getting now, though he knew not why. His tormentor had surely not felt suddenly guilty of her actions and spontaneously decided to discontinue her experiments. Perhaps her kinder- hearted assistant had persuaded her away from this method of experimentation, even for just a while. It was a nice thought. A comforting one. He was in need of one of those now, to soothe somewhat his nerves concerning his brother.
Honestly, he could not tell if Scargo was in the room with him now. He couldn't see properly, his ears felt plugged and he couldn't even feel the floor under his back much less a reassuring hand upon his arm. But whether Scargo was there or not, the worry remained. For if Scargo was here, he worried that he might be forced to undergo the same agony, and if he were not, then it was the high odds against reaching the village again.
Still, had Scargo truly escaped, then he was happy. Better for the elder to endure all things horrible; the young should not have any such experience thrust upon their souls. Whatever his outcome here, he could be safe in the knowledge that his brother had escaped. That is, if he had any clue about it.
Normally, this kind of worry would have crushed him, but the same fogginess that blurred his vision also dulled his emotions. It was somewhat amazing that he was able to feel any at all at this point. When a head felt like this, he was sure that no feeling could enter it, though he supposed that he should not judge. After all, if thoughts could pierce the haze, why not feelings? They were usually the stronger thing, or so the elders had always said. He had no reason to disbelieve them.
But all of these thoughts were extremely wearying and so took an exacting toll upon his weakened body. With no reason that he could think of to spare the effort it now took to stay awake, he simply let himself drift away into the darkness.
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A part of Scargo suddenly wished that he did not know how to count. If he hadn't then perhaps he would not be so worried as he was now, for the number that entered his head, was absorbed by his eyes was not one that he was particularly glad to see in a situation like this.
Seven. The number of stars within one of the objects before him and the total number of those particular objects. These aliens . . . how did they . . . and so quickly? Nobody could gather all of the Dragonballs that quickly unless there was a consensus among the elders that they were needed and then the appropriate measures were taken. Outsiders managing this just did not make any sense to him whatsoever.
But never mind the fact that it made no sense to him. The point was that it had happened. And the question was whether he could or even should try to do anything about this. There was a part of him that wanted to be a hero, to live up to the great example that was Dende, but Scargo didn't have the courage for that. The bigger part of him wanted to stay right here under this ship where so far nobody had detected him, or to fly home to safety. Even so . . . if these aliens got their wishes, then who knew what would happen? The last time that an outside force had come after the Dragonballs, the result was the destruction of the entire planet.
Scargo could not stop a little whimper at this thought, and he abruptly covered his mouth with both hands. What if somebody had heard him? For several minutes he lay flat on his stomach, eyes glued to the numerous pairs of legs that he could see from his vantage point, waiting for the sure sign that he had been discovered.
The sign did not come, and Scargo was relaxed enough to actually let out a big sigh of relief. The aliens hadn't heard him because of the sound of their own voices, talking about something that he had missed in his terror of being discovered.
He attuned his ears more closely to the several conversations, trying to pick out specific words. This was not an easy task at first, since there were so many voices through which to sort. But he eventually was able to follow, and he listened carefully to all of the statements made. And at them, he had to smile.
These aliens didn't know how to use the Dragonballs.
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"Would all of you shut up?" Basalt snapped, glaring over his shoulder at his underlings; they stopped arguing immediately, withering at his expression. He made it very clear that he was in a bad mood and was as likely to kill somebody at this moment as fire off an order. "There is a way to make these things work; I doubt that Lord Frieza would ever have bothered with them otherwise."
And this was true, for Lord Frieza did not go to backward planets on whims. Nameksei had been such a backwater planet, so he must have known that whatever legend pertained to these balls held truth somewhere in its telling. Despite the fact that he had never gotten the wish, he may well have discovered the secret.
Rumours travelled quickly, even from planet to planet. Tough his crew had been far away from the main world, stories easily passed into various checkpoints and refuelling stations. One end of the galaxy to the other, or simply between planets in the same solar system, it just did not matter. A good rumour would be all over the empire in a matter of several months, rather than several years. And any recent rumour involving Lord Frieza was a good one indeed.
When Lord Frieza had been found, body halved and floating through space, he had muttered only a few phrases over and over. One of them was, "Monkey . . . He was just a monkey . . ." But the other one was different, and far more intriguing, especially regarding Basalt's current situation.
"In the native tongue . . ."
Basalt's head lifted abruptly, and a smile, as dark and malicious a one as he had ever managed in his lifetime worked its way onto his lips. Had any of his underlings seen this, they might have fainted in fright.
That was the key. The Namekians' native language. And it just so happened that he had two natives at his disposal in the ship. He frowned for a moment. Or at least he had. Thanks to the incompetence of Pumice, both of those little brats might have escaped, and his chance could be ruined.
Well. He would have to investigate this personally, as it was clear that his underlings were incapable of such an undertaking. Sharply, he turned around and gave them a curt order. "The lot of you stay here. Stand guard over these, as I surely hope even incompetents such as you can manage. I will be back shortly."
His underlings parted for him as he passed, heading for the ship. It was about time for him to pay another visit to Doctor Gneiss, this time to borrow one of her test subjects, assuming that she still had any. And if she did not, then he would find some other way to get what he wanted.
He was too close to his desire not to get it now.