by Regine Abel
As we closed the distance with them, Stran emitted a savage growl and broke into a run. We followed suit. The dark blade-like darts jutting from beneath the scales of his back protruded further.
“SPLIT!” Doom shouted without even turning to look at us.
Except for Reaper who continued to rain down death from above, the other men and women of Doom’s unit split evenly in the middle, each half pressing itself against one of the two walls of the corridor, creating a clear path for the Creckel. The Kryptids in front, who had sought to seize this opportunity to rush through, suddenly tried to back away when, using his momentum, Stran rolled into a ball and came dashing in their direction. Unfortunately for them, their companions in the back kept pushing them forward.
Stran zipped by Doom’s parted unit and bowled through the throng of Kryptids. They crumpled to the ground in a tangle of broken limbs and cracked armor, screeching in pain.
“WALL!” Doom shouted as soon as Stran had rolled past him.
His unit regrouped, all of them crouching on the ground and erecting their shields in front of them in a protective wall. Just as Tabitha and I reached them, Reaper landed in our midst and the three of us raised our shields above our collective heads. Combined, they formed a half carapace.
Peeking over the light-grey, dolphin-like skin of Tremak’s arm holding the shield, I stared in awe at Stran who had stopped on the pile of wounded Soldiers who were struggling to get back on their feet. The Creckel’s back appeared to heave, the dark scales lifting as if to angle the aim of the fifty or so bladed darts beneath them.
And then he fired.
I covered my ears at the cacophony of screams from the Kryptids getting turned into sieves by the darts, their flimsier than normal chitin offering no protection from the close-range impact of the deadly weapons. I yelped when one of them struck one of our shields, and felt immediately embarrassed at the amused looks my companions gave me. Doom glanced at me with a predatory smile, the bloodlust emanating from him incredibly intoxicating.
“Hold,” he ordered everyone.
Stran rolled onto his back showing the underside of this tail wrapped around him, then fired the darts protruding there as well.
“Party time,” then Doom said, winking at me.
As one, the unit rose to its feet, while Stran was bowling through the Kryptids again, knocking them down, crippling a few in the process. Doom rushed ahead followed by Tremak and Wrath. They ran in, stabbing the Kryptids with scorpion tails, mouth darts and tail blades, or slicing them with their lances and scythed-blades protruding from their forearms. Reaper flew in, beheading a few with the sharp edges of his wings, hacking at the others with his speared limb, and shooting poisoned needles at them from his stingers.
As for us girls, we shot the fuck out of every bug that tried to get up or sneak up on our men. It was epic, it was glorious, and I wanted more.
As the last scream died down, Stran walked up to Doom and bumped his snout against the hand of his long-time war companion.
“Thanks, friend,” Doom said in his deep, rumbling voice, full of affection.
The fraternal love between them was moving. The emotions emitted by the Creckel had an alien feel to them, but not unpleasant. While different, their depth and sincerity couldn’t be denied.
After a final growl, he ran out of the room, giving my hand a quick lick on his way out, which made me giggle.
“He really likes you,” Doom said, seeming slightly surprised. “He’s rarely this expressive towards people he appreciates.”
“Well, the feeling is mutual,” I said, my cheeks heating a little, as I holstered my blaster.
Doom gave me a friendly psychic nudge of approval, and gladly accepted a small cloth from his Soulcatcher, Jessica, to wipe out some of the blood and gore on his scales. I gazed at her pensively, then at Linette—Wrath’s Soulcatcher—wondering what it was like knowing your days alongside your Warrior were numbered.
Doom had kept his original Soulcatcher, Tina, throughout her entire career in the Vanguard. With retirement from field missions being compulsory for the females at the age of fifty, she had served by his side for twenty-five years. Although she could have continued to serve the Vanguard at the HQ, she had chosen to return to Earth with her human husband and work in training the future generation of Soulcatchers, Portals, and Shields. A part of me wondered if it was because she would have found it too hard to see another take her place at his side. Another part of me wondered how hard it must have been for Jessica, trying to step into the shoes of Tina.
No harder than me trying to live up to Tabitha’s performance as Chaos’s Soulcatcher.
“Let’s go,” Doom said, heading out of the ship’s hangar. “Let’s clear up this floor asap so that we can get you ladies safe and the rest of us can go help Chaos.”
We nodded and fell into step. Reaper, who had been flying close to the high ceiling of the hangar, roaming around the room in search of any survivor that might have been hiding, flew back towards us and landed right behind Wrath.
Our task was quickly concluded, with only a handful of stragglers left behind. With much reluctance, we headed back to the secret entrance, escorted by Doom, all the more annoyed that they wouldn’t let us go recover whatever treasure trove of information Wrath had found in that hidden passage.
Once we reached the fake dead-end, Doom stopped, and his face went slack as he mind-spoke with someone.
“Tyonna is lowering the ship’s ramp,” Doom said, refocusing on us. “You’re good to go. See you soon.”
We nodded, and he closed the secret door behind us. Feeling more babied than ever, we watched on the monitor as Doom and the men walked back down the corridor on their way to the lift.
Tabitha sighed heavily. “The boys always get all the fun,” she mumbled.
“You guys get more fun than I do, with my sorry ass usually sitting on deck, ready to haul you off,” Linette said mockingly. “So, cry me a river, and welcome to my world.”
I chuckled while Tabitha made a face at her.
Strutting her stuff in a taunting way, Linette walked towards the still camouflaged ship, disappearing from view once she entered the stealth shield. Jessica walked in second with Tabitha and me closing that march.
As we began climbing the ramp, a wave of the purest malice laced with a hefty dose of insanity slammed into me. My head jerked to the left, and my hand immediately dropped to my weapons belt. Instantly alerted, Tabitha didn’t waste time asking questions. She activated her energy shield, pointing to our left, and protectively stood in front of me while reaching for her blaster. Before I could mind-speak to her what was going on, I felt evil intent the second our stalker raised his weapon. I couldn’t see him—or her—but the intense training Chaos had put me through over the past couple of weeks in anticipating an opponent’s move based on his emotions served me well.
“Run!” I shouted to Tabitha, while pushing her forward towards the inside of the ship.
Simultaneously, I fired my blaster in the general direction of the hidden enemy while diving forward into a roll. My shot didn’t hit a target, but I felt his graze my hair. Realizing what was going on, Jessica and Linette rushed back out, shields up and blasters blazing. I raised my own shield while continuing to shoot as I got back on my feet. Our shots were bouncing off what I could only assume to be an energy wall.
I attempted to contact Chaos but only met silence.
“I can’t reach the men,” Tabitha echoed almost at the same time.
For a split second, I wondered why she would say such vital information that could be heard by whoever had ambushed us, but then it struck me. I tried to mind-speak to her, but also hit a wall.
“How?” I whispered, true fear gripping me.
This shouldn’t be happening. Yumi had Shielded us, which made us immune against psychic disruptors and mind-control. Tyonna and Yumi should be seeing what was going on from the ship’s cameras. That they hadn’t come to investigate what
was holding us or help us defend spoke volumes.
“The bugs are already inside,” Tabitha said, reaching the same conclusion I had. “Everyone out,” she added, in the cold and controlled voice of experience that went a long way into helping me keep my cool.
We started descending the ramp, shields still up but stopped firing to spare the charges of our weapons. If we could make it back inside, we might have a chance.
“Leaving so soon?” asked a dreadful, clicking voice I never thought I would ever hear in person.
The Kryptid’s stealth shield dropped, revealing General Khutu standing in front of a war vessel, and two of the strangest Workers I had ever seen. Cybernetic parts were visible in various sections of their bodies, but mainly around their heads and arms. I couldn’t read any emotions from them. Although they were more organic than cybernetic, whatever the General had done to them, those females might as well be dead.
Standing on the ramp, nearly frozen by fear, my gorge rose as I gazed upon the most hated male in the galaxy. Like his Soldiers, the upper part of his head, shaped like a helmet covered in dark chitin, was adorned by a larger version of the half-moon-shaped Deynian horn, and surrounded by spikes around the forehead. However, his oversized, multifaceted eyes had an odd glimmer to them that I had never seen before in any of the images or recordings of General Khutu. They almost appeared to have a fluorescent glow to them, which made them stand out more starkly against the ashen color of his formerly black chitin. His extra-large mandibles protruding on each side of his incredibly human-looking mouth unnerved me. He’d thrown a thick mantle across his broad shoulders, covering his back—which was highly unusual for Kryptids who never wore clothes. Thick, dark-grey, chitin plates covered what parts of his muscular body I could see, with the same inhumanly narrow waist as the Workers. And another indication the Workers had been right about him having modified himself, his three-segment legs appeared straighter, giving him a strange gait as he took a couple of steps towards us, and made him look infinitely taller.
“You can always count on my dearest firstborn to meddle where he shouldn’t,” Khutu said, stopping before crossing the shelter of the energy wall protecting him from my blaster fire. “But after stealing my former brides, how kind of him to bring me fresh new ones, including his own Queen.”
The lecherous way in which he pronounced the last words and gazed at Tabitha had cold sweats running down my spine. And then he turned towards me, and my blood turned to ice.
“And a black female of the Vanguard,” he continued with his dreadfully grating voice, filled with genuine curiosity and anticipation. “There is no such thing as a Black or Asian Soulcatcher. So, what are you, little female? What is so special about you and the other one like you inside the ship?”
The sense of dread rising from Tabitha echoed mine. With his words, Khutu had confirmed he indeed had someone aboard our ship who had potentially neutralized Tyonna and Yumi.
“Rather than making idle threats, you should run while you still can,” Tabitha said in a harsh voice. “Bane is quite looking forward to bathing in your blood.”
I cast a warning glance at Tabitha, hating more than ever our inability to mind-speak due to that wretched disruptor. The General was highly unstable. The Maker only knew what could push him into some excessive response to being triggered.
“Bane… My son was perfect… so very perfect,” Khutu said wistfully. “If he and the others survive the little surprise currently on its way to them, I might just go back to my previous plan for him. If that happens, in a way, you will still have him through me, my beautiful bride.”
“Surprise?” I asked in a sharp voice, preventing Tabitha from giving him the tongue lashing I knew had been coming.
“Do you really think I don’t know what goes on in my own facilities?” Khutu asked, tilting his head to the side. “I was coming here to teach certain… dissidents a lesson, but I didn’t expect my treacherous son and the pesky Xians to join in the festivities. Let’s see how well they fare. As for you, my brides, my assistants will prepare you to receive my seed.”
“Like hell they are!” Tabitha hissed.
The freaky Workers raised their shields and walked through the energy wall protecting them. We immediately focused our fire—Tabitha and me on the left Worker, Jessica and Linette on the right one—hoping it would make their shield collapse so that we could take them out. But the Workers stopped a couple of steps in front of the wall and placed their free hand on the inner face of their shield, as if to hold it up. But my confusion quickly gave way to a greater sense of dread as the chitin on their palms appeared to peel open, revealing a circular light that began spreading some kind of pulsating energy through their energy shield.
“Everyone inside!” I shouted, not knowing what would happen, but only that it wouldn’t be good for us.
Linette and Jessica turned to run inside, only to be faced with the blasters of a modified Mimic I didn’t know. My gut instinctively told me she was Temrin, the sister Shuria had claimed had gone missing while on a mission on their behalf. The same type of cybernetics as the Workers grafted to her face told me all that I needed to know. Like me, I suspected my companions had planned on rushing the Mimic regardless, but we never had a chance.
Two blasts of light, one from each of the pulsating shields of Khutu’s assistants, slammed into us with the brutality of a freight train. My brain froze as electric tendrils wove around my mind and my body. The ground fell from under me as I flew back, knocked off my feet. Darkness swept me away before I ever touched the ground again.
Chapter 17
Chaos
The doors of the lift parted to reveal complete mayhem. Soldiers and larvae continued to battle amidst the corpses that littered the hallway, a few of them belonging to female Workers. Without a word, Bane, Varnog, and I moved in to indiscriminately kill the Soldiers and the larvae. A few of the latter made our task easier as they couldn’t seem to decide between feeding on the Soldiers they’d just killed or chasing down the others still standing.
We cleared the main corridor leading to the Gathering Hall, but didn’t open any of the doors alongside it. According to Sabra, the food storages and nurseries were located on either side, but the trouble didn’t stem from there. We would handle them later.
Backtracking our steps, we followed the corridor to the left branch which curved toward the reinforced doors of the Egg Room. The partially eaten corpse of a Soldier kept them from fully closing, which had allowed the larvae to escape the room. The eggs located on the tables on the left side of the room had all hatched and lay open. The pinkish amniotic fluid drying on their open tops made the eggs look like erupted volcanos with cooling lava. However, all the eggs on the tables on the right were still intact.
“That’s odd,” I muttered out loud before entering the code to fully open the doors.
“No, it’s not,” Varnog said with an icy voice as we entered the room. He pointed at the hatched eggs. “See the red veins along the shells? The fumes of the eggs could be deemed toxic, for lack of a better term. It’s almost like a rallying call. Any egg it touches in its vicinity will develop those veins on its surface, which will hasten it into hatching.”
“How do you know that?” I asked, taken aback.
He stared at me with his dark eyes devoid of sclera, so similar to mine, a look of repressed anger on his face that wasn’t directed at me.
“Because that’s how Scelk eggs behave,” Varnog said in a clipped tone then marched towards the tables on the right.
Making no effort to hide the seething rage boiling under the surface, the Scelk leader stabbed viciously at each of the unhatched eggs with both his tail blade and his sword. A shrill scream rose from the dying larvae they contained while pinkish spores puffed out of them, falling a few feet away in a circular radius. Just like Varnog had said, veiny tendrils immediately began to swell on the eggs touched by the spores. The larger the amount they received, the faster the veins spread.
>
I started moving towards the tables to help the Scelk in that task, but Bane caught my arm, stopping me. I gave him a questioning glance. He held my gaze and slowly shook his head in a way that meant ‘leave it alone.’ He didn’t need to explain further.
Initially created as a parasite who had stolen the body he now possessed, then taught by Bane to be a better man than the monster the General had meant for him to be, Varnog struggled daily with his nature. Sarcasm, snarky humor, and taunting behaviors helped him cope with his repressed feral nature and hide the pain and shame that ate away at him for what he was but never chose to be.
With a final look of sympathy at Varnog still hacking away at the eggs, Bane and I decided to skip the back entrances into the nurseries lining the left wall and headed instead towards the sealed door leading to the Birthing Chamber.
The doors parted on another vision of horror. The sea of eggs filling the room was traumatizing enough. However, even with our tougher skin and protective scales, destroying this many eggs in a timely manner would cause some irritation with the excessive quantity of spores and amniotic fluid we would be exposed to. But it was the sight of the ‘Kryptid’ Queen Pahiven that twisted my guts. Even from where we stood, we could see the organic membranes that had swallowed the bottom half of her body and the life support organic tubes emerging from them and plugging into her. This was a morbid déjà vu of the fate that had befallen my poor Meredith and far too many of our very first human Soulcatchers.
Bane took a sharp breath, an expression of bone deep pain fleeting over his features before he slapped on his legendary neutral mask. And yet, the young Dragon was still so lost in sorrow, he didn’t even see the handful of larvae that had hatched—or were in the process of hatching—around the room as he marched down the path to Pahiven. Thankfully, those ones weren’t feral like the ones we’d previously encountered. I slaughtered them, making sure the eggs surrounding theirs weren’t displaying the pink veins—not that it mattered as they would all be destroyed in a few moments.
