Dangerous Days of Daniel X

Chapter 64

I CAUGHT HIM staring at me, a mirthful smile on his fetid alien face. He’s fooled me twice, I thought with a shake of my head. Shame on me.

Twenty feet below the rim of the elevated landing ramp was what looked like a derailed bullet train. Someone had scrawled DEATH TO ERGENT SETH in its dust-covered side.

“You did this,” I said, turning to Seth. It wasn’t a question.

Seth took a long cigar out of his pocket and lit it with a gold Zippo as he winked at me.

“I know,” he said, blinking as he shook his head at the desolate vista. “Unreal, isn’t it? Sometimes even I can’t believe it. I mean, ever since I was little, I always dreamed of committing mass destruction. But on this kind of scale? It’s more than even I had a right to expect.”

Seth raised a claw and saluted his handiwork. Half a mile away, a massive pit was being carved out of the rubble. Insectlike machines of the same green-gray metal as the spacecraft were moving around and around in slow circles. There were more pits in the distance beyond it, and more busy insectile machines.

“They’re called World Harvesters, my race’s greatest invention,” Seth said proudly.

“They’ll chew through anything-rock, garbage, dead bodies, you name it-and remove every atom of valuable minerals and elements. It took half a million years for your people to build the city of Bryn Spi, the shining jewel of your planet. It took me one and a half hours to blow it into a billion shiny pieces. And by this time next year-and this is my favorite part-it will look like nothing ever stood here at all.”

My heart seemed to be unfastening inside my chest. “Where is everyone?” I asked.

“Your fellow Alparians? The few who are still alive scurry through the ruins like rats. They have no powers, no hope, no reason to live, really. But still they stumble on. Pathetic.”

Seth shook his head in disgust.

“Protectors of the Universe?” he said, tapping the ash from his cigar with one of his talons. “Guess they should have worried more about protecting themselves.”