Dream Called Time by S. L. Viehl Page B

recognize half the console controls or the design of the unit. “This looks like something I could seriously damage.”
    “Establishing interplanetary relay channels requires rather more than a standard com unit provides,” Apalo told me as he bent over to adjust something. When I reached for one of the keypads, he caught my hand. “I have preset all the controls, Healer. It is best that you not touch the console while you are signaling Vtaga—unless you wish to damage it.”
    “Sorry.” I put my hand in my lap.
    Apalo smiled a little as he indicated the display. “Speak clearly and directly to the monitor, like so.” He ducked his head and pressed a key. “Centuron KssetaVa, Healer Torin is ready to commence her relay.”
    “Acknowledged,” a Hsktskt voice growled over the audio. “Now transferring relay over to the secured channel.”
    “When you are ready to speak, press this switch.” After showing me which one, Apalo straightened. “And should you need assistance, Healer, I will be waiting outside in the corridor.”
    I glanced at the switch as my stomach clenched. “Thanks for your help.”
    The communications officer withdrew, which left me alone with the beast. I pressed the switch and watched the face of my old enemy coalesce on the screen.
    Seeing him made me idly wonder just how many strange and exotic patients I had treated in the years since I’d left Terra. TssVar—or, more precisely, his mate and their young—had been among my first.
    My charge nurse’s four eyes rolled wildly toward me, and I saw why she had choked out her report—the business end of a pulse rifle was pressed tightly against her larynx. Terror had mottled her smooth vermilion hide with dark splotches.
    On the other end of the weapon was a monster. A big, ugly green monster.
    It was a sextipedal, reptilian being with a number of minor contusions on its head and upper limbs. Close to ten feet tall and weighing over four hundred kilos, it towered over T’Nliqinara. An unfamiliar metallic uniform covered a brutal frame thick with broad ropes of muscle. Whatever it was, it meant business.
    As TssVar did now, judging by the look in his glaring yellow eyes. The former OverLord spoke in his native language, a series of clicks, grunts, and hisses that the ship’s translator muted as it translated it into Terran for me.
    Reptilians generally didn’t age in the same way humanoid species did, and the years had left little mark on the former OverLord’s brutal features. The only way I knew he was five years older was the subtle darkening of his scale patterns.
    “SsurreVa.”
    “TssVar.” I didn’t know how a measly warm-blood was supposed to address the supreme ruler of the Hsktskt Faction, so I didn’t even try. “How have you been?”
    “I have enjoyed better decades.” He took a moment to study me. “So, it seems, have you.”
    He looked tired, I thought, feeling a little sorry for him. The former OverLord had never been especially fond of politics, and now he was permanently swamped in them.
    “It’s not been all bad,” I lied. “I didn’t have a plague make me into a supreme ruler overnight. I just took a nap for five years.”
    “It was never my wish to rule,” he informed me. “The surviving elected me to the throne.”
    “Being possessed by an alien persona wasn’t on my to-do list, either.” I had learned to read some Hsktskt body language when TssVar had enslaved me, and the set of his facial muscles was saying he was unhappy as well as tired. “Are you planning to stay with it, or give it up?”
    One of his huge yellow eyes rolled upward while the other glared at me. “One does not ‘give up’ supreme rule, SsurreVa.”
    I considered that. “Who would yell at you if you did?”
    TssVar’s species couldn’t smile, but he flashed me a couple rows of teeth in an approximation of the expression. “Now I remember why I have missed you.”
    “Same here.” He seemed surprised by that, and I added,