Chapter 130: Arming Weapons
"I am in," said Jun Li, cutting through the atmosphere between me and Midnight. I slowly blinked, breaking the eye contact between us, and turned my attention back to my AI.
"All 22?" I asked, just to be sure.
"All 22," he answered, spinning around in his chair and giving me a huge smile. "And I am already into their operating systems, including air."
"You are the greatest," I replied before turning my attention back to Midnight. "I am going to turn on the video feed. Do you want to be in it, or do you want to go hide someplace?"
"I’ll be standing by your side," he assured me, and something told me that he meant that in more ways than just physically standing beside me for this video conference.
"Jun Li, open a video comm with Captain Xyrix," I said as I put on my helmet. Sitting up in my chair, I crossed my legs in front of me, letting my skirt fall to both sides, exposing the tight pants I was wearing underneath with the thigh-high boots.
"About time you called. Where the flacking hell are—"
"Hello, Captain," I said, smirking at the dumbfounded look on the captain’s face as he looked into the video. "I take it you missed me."
"You are not who I thought you would be," he tried to explain, looking nervously between myself and Midnight. "I meant no disrespect."
"Awe, Midnight, you seem to be scaring the poor captain," I joked, looking at the massive creature that stood just behind my chair. "I assume you two know each other?"
"We might have met once or twice," grunted Midnight. "How are you doing Xyrix? Still looking for Tyris?"
The captain turned even paler, and I was tempted to turn around to see what kind of face Midnight was making.
"No-no," the captain stuttered. "But now that I know that you aren’t the human I was supposed to be meeting here, how about we all just go away and call it a day?"
"See, I would absolutely love to do that," I said just as Jun Li started to speak in my earpiece. "Except you seem to be arming your weapons. That’s not all that friendly of you, is it?" I asked with a tisking sound.
"You are mistaken. We are not arming any weapons," he said, looking around his own bridge in a panic.
"It’s fine if you are," I assured him. I wouldn’t want the poor male to die of a heart attack before I had the chance to kill him, now would I? "You won’t be able to fire them off anyway. Actually, why don’t we just go and turn them off for you? I wouldn’t want there to be any accidents."
I looked at Jun Li, and he nodded his head. "All weapons are disabled," he said through my earpiece.
"Good," I replied in English. "Can you also make sure that they can’t send out any communications? I don’t want them to call for backup."
"Understood. Shutting down all communications except for the current one," responded Jun Li, also in English. It was amazing how much my mother tongue was starting to feel like a foreign language. I wasn’t sure how much I liked that.
"Thank you," I said to him before turning my attention back to the captain on the viewing screen. "Now, Captain. Could you tell me who put this plan in your head?" I asked him. "Because I am pretty sure that I have yet to offend you."
"The Alliance wanted me to deliver something to you, but I wanted to kill you. It was all my own plan," said the very nervous rat.
"I think the Lord doth protest too much, methinks," I chuckled. "So what you are trying to tell me was that it was your idea to use kill me on your own; you just happened to have 21 other ships bored with nothing better to do than tag along?" I was really starting to get upset with how much these aliens underestimated my intelligence.
Then again, they were using Pippa Flynn as the measuring stick.
"Why don’t I just send you over the parcel from the Alliance, and we will both go about our day?" pressed the captain one last time. Unfortunately for him, I was done with the conversation.
"No. How about you just go die?" I suggested instead and nodded at Jun Li. He nodded back, and I watched as Captain Xyrix started to understand what was going on.
"What are you doing?!?" he demanded as he started to breathe heavily.
"I wanted to know if you needed air to breathe like I do," I said with a shrug of my shoulders. "Apparently, it is a very common thing to test out. I’ve had it tested on myself numerous times," I continued, never taking my eyes off the screen.
"Jun Li, if you can, can you put up the main feed from all of the ships?" I asked.
"You know, you don’t have to do this," said Midnight. I looked up at him to see a concerned look on his face. Knowing that he was saying that out of consideration and for no other reason, I decided to explain myself.
"If I am going to call for the deaths of so many people, the least I can do is watch them die." I didn’t know if that made sense or not, but I felt it was cowardly to order their deaths, but not stomach being able to watch it happen. If I couldn’t watch it, I shouldn’t do it.
"Very noble sentiment," said Silver for the first time since our interaction.
"Hardly noble," I replied with a shake of my head. "If I were truly noble, I wouldn’t be punishing them for doing nothing more than obeying orders."
"There are many definitions of what it means to be noble," said Silver, shaking his head. "To us, the sentiment of honoring those you kill by watching it happen is one of the noblest. Only a weak coward orders the death of others but cannot stomach watching it."
I grunted a response before sighing. "To be kind to your enemies is to be harsh to yourself," I said as the bodies started to drop. "Now to go get my supplies," I continued with a smile.
