Page 12 of The First Omega Made
For the most part, Merriel altered the channels of speech, the new male’s voice cracking and garbling at odd intervals. “Mostly swears, with no real translation. All of them involve whores… No, that’s not the right word. This dude really doesn’t like Revulons…”
“Crab whores.” Noel nodded sagely.
The scoreboard that Merriel had up earlier pinged, and another point went into Noel’sspacecolumn. The omega’s eyes flicked up and locked onto it with feigned indifference. The twitch of his tail gave him away.Annoyance.
Noel cleared his throat. “Merriel, transmit my voice to him, please.”
“On it.” Merriel gave a perfunctory beep as the frenzied alpha shouted and slammed between bouts of violent coughing.
“Ikkra N—” Noel spoke, his words guttural and hissed on sharp teeth, but Merriel translated almost instantly, using a sound-masking technology for us to hear his true meaning. I’d need to update my brain implant with proper Naleucian if I could handle it. Some languages were too alien or biologically impossible.
“Calm yourself, warrior. We have removed you from the care of the Revulon base. There is no enemy left alive.” Noel stiffened as the male inside ceased his swearing and slamming.
“Fornicating Revulon feces! It is a good thing they are dead. Praise.”
“Merriel, please transliterate for them.” Noel canted his head as if listening to what lay beneath Merriel’s words, to the Naleucian’s speaking.
“You speak like a child,” the male said as he pressed himself to the door of the unit and stared out the thickened crystal window. His pinned pupil locked onto Noel.
“No child. Omega… Gene bomb! Why are you sentient? Who has permitted you?” Rather than the rage the creature had shown before, the alpha stared in wide-eyed alarm.
“I and my patrons were the only survivors of my vessel. They returned to our Paradise when I was but elev—nine rotations.” Mater Terra solar rotations and their planet must have moved differently—it made sense. “I was left—”
“Of course you were left, it was your purpose. And all the eggs perished?” Wild eyes met his before flicking to me and then Vil.
Noel nodded.
“Your patrons did not teach you? Your lexicon, it did not state your mission?” The alpha stared as if he’d been presented with something fearsome. “And you’ve been allowed to mate! And there is only one, thank goodness you are not breeding.”
Noel slapped a hand over the mark on his neck and kept silent. His tail flicked. “There is nobody to allow or disallow me to do anything. Vil is my mate. He is both alpha and beta. We have young, and you will address us with respect.”
“Heavens and—” Whatever the male said garbled, the words a litany of swears that Merriel could only translate, but the male seemed more afraid than angered. “Gene bomb!”
“What is wrong with that?” I spoke up and earned a glance from the alpha. “You said this before. What is a gene bomb?”
“You experience it! You are afflicted with his genes, are you not? I see in that one, Tal and beta.” He glanced toward Gorm who had been peeking around the doorframe with wide eyes. “He is incomplete. To take of your blood and serum is to initiate change. He is virulent.”
“If that was my purpose, am I not doing my duty?” Noel’s voice sounded strange coming forth in two ways at once.
“Your duty was to be alskikta nagar…” The last words from the alpha garbled. For the Naleucian words, Merriel didn’t have a translation. After the foreigner spoke, he went pale as a ghost and stepped back. “What happened to the eggs brought with you?”
“The incubation chamber had a catastrophic failure and hull breech. Raziel and Nirem tried to save them but could only reach my egg in time.” Noel’s tone hardened.
“The reason your egg wasn’t destroyed wasn’t because they saved your egg. It was because your egg was never in the incubator! You were not special or wanted. You are materials.” The male slammed his hands against the door and snarled.
“What was that word?” I leaned over, whispering to Noel.
“Craniotomy and life support,” he murmured back. A grim fate to have his brain disconnected, removed from its host and disposed, so his body lay there nothing more than a rapidly regenerating vessel of organs.
“Your genes will match and morph to whatever they’re in if continually replenished. In Paradise, we use what you are as organ donors. I cannot imagine why they were cruel enough to let a gene bomb live, let alone to not be ablated.” The male pulled away from the door, but his face never wavered in intensity.
“Friend, we mean you no disrespect. We do not know much about Noel or where he came from. Noel, himself, has never been to thisParadiseyou keep mentioning. I am Vil. This is Noel, my mate.” Vil gestured toward me. “Will you please respect my mate?”
The bitter look on the male’s face softened, and he nodded once. “The scouts that went out with yourmateand their eggs failed their mission and should have never left it—him, behind.”
“Now, what is your name?” Vil approached the door with a cautious step, his posture rising to his full height, a few inches more than the alpha in their chamber.
“Shafa,” the male said, his posture slowly relaxing, the anger and vitriol almost melting from him. “And I apologize. It is rare to see what your Noel is. It is even more rare for him to have a name, or to be alive in the classic sense. And your compatriots are a strange group; your blood is very badly warped. What planet were you designed on?”
