Page 8 of The First Omega Made
Maybe I wished he did.
The weapons were in varying states of disrepair as our men and Vil leafed through decomposed crates coated in more of that slime mold. I eyed the pulses of it warily.
“You really do not like it, do you?” Noel tracked my gaze, and I shook my head.
“Call it a hunch?”
“Whatever it is, we will heal if we’re stricken or kill it.” Noel’s confidence that he was near immortal spooked me. I’d believed my kind were immortal, too.
The faniculum mold pulsed and undulated, the pace of it increasing as my own anxiety rose. “I’ve heard of these, guys. Let’s go. Let’s come back with a sodium hypochlorite fogger and just murderate it all.”
“Murderate. I like this.” Noel turned from me and left the armory room, scouting the hall with tentative steps and a tailraised in alert. “I also do not like it, but I’m not ready for a tactical retreat.”
“Keep an open mind about it. I’m not explaining to Nexus why I watched you two die from an asshole hive mind mold.”
“Hive mind? Elaborate.” Noel cocked his head as he stared at me, his stiff demeanor and those eerie eyes of his wearing my resolve down.
“I heard rumor that the faniculum is multiple organisms and they communicate via those tendrils. I’d hazard not to touch them or bring any of it back onto the ship.”
“Merriel, is there a decontamination process for when we reboard?” Noel had our well-being in mind.
“Absolutely, sir. I’ll do it.” Merriel was remarkably obedient with Noel, and the only reason I could imagine was that he spoke as few words as possible and didn’t use much allegory. He was also closer in age to Merriel than any of us besides the captain.
Noel sneered at the slime mold as he studied it, reaching out with spread fingers as his tail straightened and neck tensed—something to do with electrosensitive pores. “Definitely communicating. I cannot scent it, so I do not know if it is emitting anything dangerous.”
I could tell him, or not. The only thing I worried about was if the slime mold had absorbed any life-forms with common tongue or easily translated language. If it had only known Revulon, I was in the clear.
“This is shit,” Vil said, tossing a crumbling gun to the floor. Whatever nonmetallic compound that comprised it crumbled like sunbaked plastic. I reached my foot over to a scattered piece and confirmed that it was a type of polymer of some kind. It crunched under my foot with an eggshell-like quality.
Gorm retreated first, pushing us down a hall, then another. Ridges up the back of his neck flared and lifted, indicating hesensed something I did not. Vil and Noel caught wind of it, too, if their posture and sudden intense focus was to be believed.
As we rounded a corner, I caught a glimpse of something down an opposite hall—a neuron cluster.Basically, a brain.It pulsed to life, and I instinctively aimed my gun and fired, leaving a scorch mark along the alloy wall. The tendrils sprouting from it deflated and withered before my eyes.
“What was that for?” Vil turned on me.
“If rumors are true, whatever that thing is, better not send message to its friends. I’m telling you, bad news.” I stared him down through my thick mask and he relented with a nod. He’d known me long enough to trust me.
As far as war bases went, it wasn’t as enormous as some I’d seen. We were only exploring one hall and heading rapidly toward what I assumed would be the core. The entire thing would be built vertically, with a pylon through the center, radiating outward. Revulons were very predictable with design and carcinization, the process of evolution that sent all shit spiraling down the pathway toward crabdom, assured they had one track focus.Why was it always crabs?
They had a rather humanoid core, but their hind quarters split into four segmented legs, like a strange sort of crab centaur, two arms with dexterous fingers and a second set with pincers. They were extinct, anyway. Functionally.
Their inner mechanisms were familiar to me. I’d almost primarily hosted myself in Revulons a few hundred solar rotations ago. Their thoraxes were comfortable, warm, and their eyes saw so many colors that it was almost like being blind in a human body.
As we neared the convergence of the structure, Vil wasted no time in rearing back to kick the door down, but I stopped him. There was a control at the side that needed a firm grasp, like apincer. My human form couldn’t do it, but I gestured for Vil to squeeze the two toggles together to see if the door opened, first.
He tried the clenched switch, and the door inched open a mere centimeter, which somehow pleased me. Noel stepped forward to pry the doors apart, and a blissful stream of air and miraculously clean and well-lit insides told me that part of the base still functioned, still had pressure.
We stepped through and closed the door behind us. The slime mold hadn’t penetrated that far, yet. I turned a setting on my gun to a lower level of plasma and aimed at my feet, decontaminating them before offering to do the rest. Gorm got the drift and set his gun to heat and tried too. It worked well, and we moved on.
A series of guttural clicks echoed about, penetrating even through my helmet as we glanced up—the sound a millennia-old recording reminding inhabitants of the faniculum infection, and to seek stasis chambers on level nine.
Vil glanced at a diagram on the wall, the design faded and peeling at the edges, trying to parse out where to go, eventually tapping on the map somewhere near the garbage incinerator.
“Nah. Trust me. I’ve studied Revulon history. Let’s go…” I trailed my finger over the map and held my tongue until I got to the ninth level. I tapped the map, and a letter flaked off, falling to the floor with a flutter.
“You sure?”
“Positive. Should be their labs, furthest from the generators but in line for power. Protects the data.” I handwaved my knowledge off as if it were common. They didn’t know what Sarge learned in human schooling, so it was easy.
