"It could've been worse." She agreed. She looked surprised to be alive. I think we all were. Those of us who were alive.
CHAPTER 31
Azavar knew that her thoughts were going to give her away the moment that she stepped foot back aboard the Explorer Mother ship. She was the only member of the foray team to return but the pilot was at first busy at his controls and did not have the time to seek answers. She closed her mind to him and he did not press her. As the lone survivor it could be expected that she had suffered a traumatizing experience and was not readily willing to share it. Her people were not particularly social in the first place so it was no great surprise that she made it back to the Mother Ship without any questions being asked.
The larger shock came when she was allowed back aboard the Explorer Ship and no one either questioned her about the events which had led to the destruction of almost the entire party or even surprised that she was keeping her mind closed. The arrogance of the Elders was such that they did not deem anything she might have to say worth hearing, and it was soon to be understood that the Elders would do themselves what the Juveniles had failed to do.
Azavar could hardly believe that no one noticed the difference within her. That the other Palag- those few who still survived- could walk right past her and not know that within her an alien tide was surging, transforming her, remaking her into a new form. A day later, when its effects were completely manifested, she waited with bated breath every time one of the others came near to her, as infrequently as it occurred, but never once did one of the Elders approach her. They enjoyed the seclusion of the privileged upper decks and, knowing the effects they had on the Juveniles, the Elders seldom came down to bother them.
The ship seemed barren and empty as Azavar tried to come to grips with what she had become. Those few Juveniles of her clone group whom she had been able to bond with were now all dead, but that in itself was probably a good thing; they would have seen right through her, she felt, and the game would've been up.
But wasn't any kind of life better than no life at all? Though the change was now complete, she felt hardly any difference. The biggest obstacle, she had felt, would be in finding sustenance, but the food paste the Explorer Ship’s galley produced had not affected her as adversely as she had expected. There had been a little indigestion but afterward she had felt strangely strong. Stronger than she had ever felt before, and she knew it was the mixture of genetics. She had become half-Human and that Human side had opened up myriads of new potentialities within her. Not only did she feel stronger, but she seemed to be able to think with a clarity she had never known before.
Her thoughts were a jumbled mess. She questioned the morality of using a sentient species to re-create their own. She even now questioned the morality of using non-sentient species. Didn't that species have as much right to life, to its chance to survive, even one day possibly becoming sentient itself? Weren't the individual cells in all of these beings as sentient as the cells within her body? She looked anew, as if her eyes had just been opened for the first time, at the Explorer branch of the Palag as a sub-species, or even an entirely different species, from the original Palag who had sent them out, so different had they become. The original Palag had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams when they had created the genetically enhanced Explorers to cast their seed throughout the firmament which had been denied the majority of them, but in the creating they had lost something as well. It was a word the Explorers no longer used. The closest Human analogy was the term humanity. The Explorer branch of the Palag race had lost the knowledge of right and wrong.
Azavar did not believe any longer that this was what the original Palag would have wanted. This rapine and theft of entire worlds from their original species' dominion! Yet, once again, as a new Juvenile, there was very little she could hope to accomplish against the might of the Explorer Elders. She had found a new strength in her Human half, but it was as nothing compared to the strength of the Explorer Elders, the eldest of which was purported to have been among the first clones created over eleven million years ago!
Then the Explorer Elders left the ship to go down and finish the upstart Vampires, once and for all. Azavar had little doubt they would succeed. The Eldest Vampire Marcel, he who had captured her mind, had been little more than a Juvenile compared to the Palag Elders aboard the ship, and yet, he had possessed a strength which could not be measured in the same way as the Explorer Elders. A strength she began to understand more now that she recognized it within herself. It was a different kind of strength and left her wondering if it would be as easy for the Palag Elders as they had anticipated.
The ship was so empty that she did not see anyone at all as she made her way to the large medical facility. After a short search she found what she was looking for and held it up to examine it. She knew she did not have much time, maybe several hours, before the Elders would return victorious. She had to accomplish her goal quickly and efficiently and thoroughly, if she wanted to have any chance at all to survive. The Explorer Elders would kill the Human-strain Vampires and she would be alone in the Universe. She had to make more of her own kind. Explorer-strain Vampires!
The Auto Injector was a simple device to use and could be used for both sampling as well as injecting. Azavar set the electronic indicator and then held the device against her own arm. It made a small whining noise and then the clear tube within the holder filled up with her blood. The blood, mixing with the oxygen already within the tube, turned a deep red as it filled. That was so shocking she almost lost her grip on the Auto Injector! Her blood was no longer black!
Azavar did not have time for shock. The clock was ticking and there were several dozen Palag remaining aboard the ship who had to be inoculated before the Elders returned. What she hoped to accomplish beyond not being alone she could not really say. Even all of the remaining Explorer Juveniles left would stand no chance against the five Elders when they returned, if all five returned; but she did not know what else to do. All she knew was that she no longer wanted to be alone. To be the only one of her kind.
In her heart she felt as though she were a better being now. That it would not be a detriment to spread what she had been given to the other Palag. Her eyes were now opened to the wrongness of what they had been doing to the Human race. With that thought uppermost in her mind, she pocketed the Auto Injector and left the medical ward.
She immediately ran into another Palag as she walked through the doorway into the corridor. Valin, Explorer Clone Group 726,457, the clone group immediately before her own, stopped as he saw her exit and stared at her, trying to read her thoughts, silently demanding an answer to her unauthorized presence in the medical ward. She opened her mind that he might see and, stepping close to him as she did so, he was unprepared when she whipped out the Auto Injector and slapped it against his shoulder, injecting him through the thin material of his clothing.
His reaction was instantaneous and severe. He snarled and sprang away, ripping the Injector free of his skin, but she had heard the whine of the device operating and knew it was too late for him. Her blood, her half Human Vampire blood, was now within his body. It could not be gotten out
'What have you done!' Valin's thoughts whip-cracked across her consciousness, but her mind was still open to him, not far enough open that her thoughts might be detected any farther than the distance separating herself and Valin, but enough that he might see all that she wished him to know. She was sure that once he had seen what was in her mind, once he understood that there was no escaping his fate, he would have no choice but to embrace it.
He went through her mind, angrily at first, but then with a kind of resigned fatalism as he realized how limited her options had been. How limited his own were now. Once injected, there could be no stopping the spread. The Vampire blood was invasive and overwhelming. It could not now be halted. Now Valin had two options. Survive or perish.
'I have no choice.' Valin said. 'You have left me none. I will help you.'<
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CHAPTER 32
We stood amid the hissing, bubbling mess in a state of near shock. There were dozens of dead FBI Agents interspersed throughout the long corridor, hacked into pieces, their blood now intermingling with that of the bubbling, hissing blood and flesh of the Palag Elders who had made their last stand here on a lonely world at the end of the Spiral Arm of the Galaxy we here on Earth called the Milky Way. They had come a long way just to die, but their journey was now at an end.
"Their self-righteous superiority would not allow them to move on without resolving this one way or the other." Sonafi said tiredly. Her wound had already sealed, the bones beginning to knit, but the energy to do so, stolen from other parts of her body, had left her drained and in need of sustenance. "They are so very much like us, in their own way, but it makes me wonder what kind of a future we might hope for. The futility of it all."
I did not say anything. Exhausted, standing in the middle of yet another of our battle grounds, I could understand her despondency. Once again, somehow, we had pulled victory from the sure fires of defeat, but we had no idea what was in store for us next. I did not want to think about all of those tachyon signals the Humans had sent out and what kind of response there would be once they are received… as well as wondering what response there would be from the Explorer ship above when their Elders did not return.
"We were very lucky!" Sonafi said as we were surrounded by Vampires, Brid among them.
"They underestimated us." I said as I leaned over to retrieve the two swords the Palag Master had thrown down at the last moment. "We are all very lucky!"
……….
"I saw how you fought for me!" Sonafi purred as she curled up next to me. "You fought like the demented. You literally threw yourself at him!"
"I thought he was going to kill me." I said.
"You don't have the helmet on anymore." She reminded me. "I know when you're lying!" But if she had been a cat her purrs would have been very loud indeed.
"I did at first." I admitted. "I did not think there was any way I could defeat him, but then that changed. I began to see where he was flawed. I began to see the weaknesses in his forms. It was the eons of training. He was faster than me, but not a better swordsman."
"Nor was he as far beyond you as he must have thought he would be. Even though he was so very much Elder." Sonafi said.
"He got a surprise." I agreed. "I wonder what that means for us?"
"It means there may be a finite level at which we might plateau." She postulated. "I have expected as much. Wondering when you might reach it. The glass ceiling! You may be close to it now. One day there may be a great many of us all on an equal stature."
"I think this changes things!" I said. "I shall probably want to eliminate my competition before they grow too old, as the old Palag Master had done. Which Vampire is the closest to me in age. I'll start with her!"
"I wouldn't think along those lines," Sonafi said, giving me a poke in the ribs. A poke in the ribs with the tip of the little weapon I had acquired from the Palag Master, "or I might decide that I would like to be the Master!"
"You are already, aren't you!" I chided her amused.
"Don't push your luck!" She said, putting the weapon back where she had found it. In her own pocket.
"I hope you know what you are doing with that thing." I said. "It might be small, but somehow I do not think it is a toy."
"It's rather simple. It won't go off unless I desire for it to go off. And yes, I have no doubt it has a very real wallop." Sonafi chided me back, but before we could continue our banter, my cell phone rang. I answered it. It was Irving.
"You may want to come up to the roof." He said when I put it to my ear, not even waiting for my hello.
"Talk to me." I said.
"You wouldn't believe it if I told you. Just come up to the roof."
"It's Azavar." Sonafi said.
"I feel her now too." I said. "She has changed."
"I think a lot of things have changed." Sonafi said.
We hastened to the roof with the rest of the Vampires who had survived and stood in near shell-shocked silence at the sight which greeted us. It wasn't just Azavar. We had felt the others who were with her as we ascended. There were seven of them in all, standing in a semicircle in front of a ramp which had been lowered from a type of flying vehicle I had never expected to see this close up ever again. It had been thousands and thousands of years since I last gotten this close to one of their ships, and that when they had first become aware of me, and never since. Though I now knew that the saucer ship sitting on the roof in front of me was only a lander, that the Explorer Mother Ship from whence it had come carried dozens of these and was so large as to defy imagining, yet the ship sitting in front of me still stunned with its dimensions. It was huge! The size of a large house. Azavar stood at the forefront of the half circle of Palag. Her eyes, those fathomless, teardrop shaped sensory organs that I now knew as a fact only functioned within the thermal level, immediately sought my own.
'We are come as emissaries.' Azavar spoke in my mind. 'To represent all of the Palag genres.'
'All?' I replied telepathically.
'Your communications were received.'
We stood in silence, both mental and audible, while this was digested. Meanwhile the roof behind us filled with the Vampires and Humans who had made this possible in the first place, and I felt the unease of the Palag who were standing behind Azavar.
"None of you have reason to fear." I told them, and with Sonafi we walked up to stand before Azavar, who somehow managed not to fall back before us. The Palag who were with her did not do as well.
"Things have changed." Azavar managed, her Palag vocal cords struggling with vocalizing the words. "We are now all Vampires. You are the Master Vampire." She bowed her head slightly, the Palag behind her more deeply. An interesting development. She was Elder to them. By one day.
"Our communications were received?" Sonafi asked.
"Yes." Azavar answered simply. "If the issue had not already been determined, the communications we received would have resolved it."
"Do you think they would have been obeyed?" I asked, remembering the hate-filled face of the Explorer Palag Master.
'No!' Azavar replied mentally, her throat already sore and reverting to what was, after all, their normal mode of communication. 'In which case they would have been dealt with and we would have all perished along with them. By killing them you have actually saved our lives!' Then she added;
'We have an offer to make you! We have need of a Ship's Master. The Explorer Ship would be yours, and we and the others your crew. To continue with a form of our earlier mission.'
"A form of it?" I asked aloud.
"To continue stealing life forms!" Sonafi snapped angrily.
'No!' Azavar sent. 'To form barren, lifeless worlds to accept us the way we are. For all three of our species!' Here Azavar paused for a moment to let this sink in. 'You may have as much time to think about it as you wish. You are the Master.'
"What's there to think about!" Brid demanded of us, stepping up with a grin on his face. "We'll be here whenever you decide to come back!" His eyes strayed to the heavens and I found that Sonafi's and my own followed.
"I would never have imagined such a thing was possible!" I said, pulling my gaze back and to Sonafi's face. "Peace."
"It is all I have ever dreamed of." Sonafi said, and this I knew to be true. So what choice did I really have!
"We can come back to Earth later?" I asked.
'You are the Master.' Azavar replied. 'The ship will go wherever you wish for us to go. We will do whatever you tell us to. That is how the Vampire Community functions, is it not?'
Sonafi took my hand and pulled me unresisting towards the ramp leading up into the disc ship…
…and that was just the beginning of the story.
The Vampire-Alien Chronicles Page 24
