Page 3 of Reaper

Like the rest of the nineteen surviving adults and eight young who shared this living space with me, he stood on longer legs than a regular Creckel. A series of long horns adorned his forehead, the top of his head, and part of the back of his neck. My friends were the result of the sick experiments the Kryptid General Khutu had forced my parents to perform on these highly intelligent creatures. He’d hoped to turn them into lethal battle weapons that he could use against the rest of the galaxy in his mad obsession with conquest. But the Creckels had not submitted to his will. They were not only too intelligent and too inherently good, but also too mentally strong to be brainwashed or mind controlled. While it saved them from becoming the General’s bloodthirsty puppets, it also condemned us to this slow death.

One by one, the Creckels each came to receive their small ration. They bumped their snouts on my hand or against my leg in gratitude, some even projecting a comforting or affectionate image. None of them complained, even though it was nowhere near enough, especially for the adults, and even more so for the males.

My throat tightened again, and I fought the wave of despair that wanted to crush me. There were too many of us, too many mouths to feed, and not enough food to go around. They had stopped reproducing three years ago when the first signs of trouble became obvious. Even without that, the base wasn’t big enough for them to move and get the exercise their species required. If I didn’t find a way to fix what was left of the membranes, we were all done for.

I looked up at the ceiling. My bad eyesight didn’t help assessing the current state of the ventilation membrane there. Created like the lining of a lung, the alveoli breathed in the carbon dioxide we exhaled and sent back fresh oxygen for us. Like the membrane, most of the alveoli had decayed or stopped functioning. And the glowworms that fed from the bacteria growing on the ventilation membrane while providing light for us had also slowly started dying. Once again, I suspected the membrane had been eating them to sustain itself. We could no longer sleep next to the remaining membranes for fear they would eat us, too.

I picked up the final piece of larvae from the container. Initially, I had considered eating it raw as well to keep the maximum nutrients. However, its lightly musty scent convinced me otherwise. Petting a few of the Creckels’ heads on my way out, Brees shadowing me as usual, I headed to the large laboratory where my parents had once worked. I cooked the thin steak until it lost the sliminess that gave it that horrible smell. It didn’t taste great, but certainly better than the wilted greens from the garden.

Fighting the sense of doom twisting my innards, I pulled out the membrane cells I had been working on from the last functioning cooling unit. They had grown a little since last night, but I couldn’t see well enough to confirm if they were healthy or if the cells were defective. I swallowed back the tears that wanted to well in my eyes. I couldn’t afford to waste that moisture, and crying wouldn’t help us anyway. But how was I to save my friends and myself when I couldn’t even see what I was doing? When half the tools were broken or mostly defective? When I didn’t have half the reagents needed? And when I had acquired too little scientific knowledge before my parents passed away?

Sensing the despair threatening to engulf me, Brees rubbed her cheek against my leg, then projected the image of a sun growing from her chest before it wrapped around me. I smiled and hugged her draconic head, being careful not to stab myself on her sharp horns.

“I love you, too, Brees,” I said in a whisper, my voice squeaking from disuse.

Taking heart from this brief moment of affection, I turned back to my impossible task. We hadn’t survived this long just to die like this. I would see the sun again.

Chapter 2

Reaper

Aproud smile stretched my lips as my youngest brothers began their descent, their translucent bug wings flapping almost in sync as they landed one by one on their respective marks. The oldest of the twelve young boys, aged four to six, were finally ready to move on to the next group to learn more advanced aerial acrobatics and the basics of in-flight combat. Those were my favorite classes to teach. But knowing Bane—our oldest brother and leader—he would hog the acrobatics classes and probably the combat ones as well.

Even now, he was flying gracefully in the light blue sky of Khepri, beneath the ghostly silhouettes of the planet’s three rings. His infant son would soon be starting his flight lessons. With luck, that would keep Bane too busy so I could lay claim to the advanced classes of this group.

“Reaper,”Doom mind-spoke to me,“I need you at the HQ conference room ASAP. We have a team meeting.”

His voice in my head slightly startled me. It shouldn’t, considering telepathy was the standard communication method on Khepri.

“On my way,”I answered before disconnecting from his mind. I turned to my brother Rogue, standing a few feet from me. Unlike Bane, with whom I only shared a father, Rogue and I shared both parents. “I must go. I’m being summoned for a team meeting,” I told him.

“Oooh! Someone is off on a mission,” Rogue said. A slightly jealous smile appeared on his adorable baby face that clashed incredibly with his big, muscular body and deep rumbling voice.

“I hope so,” I replied with a fiendish grin. “I’m always up for some action.”

“Enjoy!” Rogue said as I summoned my wings before taking flight towards the HQ of the Vanguard—the army of bioengineered Warriors and of psychic human females.

It was a fifteen-minute flight at high speed from the Dragons Rise—where we had taken to training our young siblings—to the HQ building. As I made my approach and then landed, I nodded at a nearby group of Soulcatchers—the psychic females able to catch the soul of a fallen Warrior. They waved back with a grin.

The large doors of the HQ parted before me, and I entered the imposing hall decorated in the standard black and gold colors of the Vanguard. I hopped inside the elevator at the same time as Reklig and his human mate, Madeline. They made a lovely and visually striking couple. Madeline was a gorgeous albino of African descent, with long, curly, blondish white hair and stunning greenish-grey eyes. Reklig was a Scelk, with dolphin-like skin, a smattering of black chitin scales on his shoulders and cheeks, thicker ones covering his bald head, and large, almond-shaped black eyes devoid of sclera. They were both part of my team.

“Hey guys,” I said to the couple. “Any idea what’s cooking?”

“Sure do,” Reklig said with a shit-eating grin.

I glared at him, realizing he intended to leave me hanging.

“Varnog will give us the details,” Madeline sympathetically offered.

“Varnog?” I asked, surprised that the Scelk leader would be involved in one of our missions. And then it struck me. “We’re going to one of the secret bases?!”

“So it seems,” Reklig replied, his smile turning predatory as the lift came to a stop, and its doors parted.

My hearts soared, their heartbeats picking up the pace with excitement. After our recent victory against our archnemesis, General Khutu, Varnog had read the memories of the General, down to the oldest ones. He’d discovered the location and contents of every single secret lab Khutu had set up in his mad bid for conquering the galaxy. The Galactic Coalition had been given the responsibility of doing most of the cleanup, which meant that our tackling this mission instead implied there was danger or something of great value to the Vanguard. Having no clue what it could be, I eagerly opened the door to the conference room as soon as we reached it.

We walked into the large, rectangular room once more decorated in black and gold. Despite the stark colors, the large windows looking out onto the plaza outside the HQ allowed plenty of light in, making the room look airy and inviting. Doom, our team leader, was already standing at the head of the long conference table large enough to seat twenty people. His Soulcatcher, Jessica, and my own, Martha, were sitting on the opposite side from the door. We settled across from them, joined shortly thereafter by Varnog and Thanh.

Once again, I silently envied Doom’s appearance. Like all his Xian brothers, the genetically engineered Warrior possessed golden scales that contrasted beautifully with the black shirt of the Vanguard. Their creator, Dr. Xi, had given them all large black eyes devoid of sclera, wavy black hair, and breathtaking features. While I couldn’t complain about my own level of attractiveness, I would have preferred similar scales to his instead of my black chitin ones, and my multifaceted bug eyes inherited from my sire. My brothers and I weren’t Xian Warriors but Dragons, as we’d labeled ourselves due to our large percentage of Gomenzi Dragon DNA.

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