Page 32 of The First Omega Made
Doc shuffled off toward the med bay and I went to the storeroom. Vil was being paranoid about the faniculum mold, and I couldn’t blame him.
“Merriel, can I get you to run an air quality report, do a full-air cycle and send a sample from the filters to Doc? The spores have a distinct shape.” I picked up some of our clothes and threw them down the laundry chute.
I stared at the laundry. “And check clothes coming in. Fibers are harbingers of spores.”
“Yes, sir!” Merriel gave an affirmative beep—entirely pointless posturing—and I headed out to the cargo bay.
I spent the better part of the afternoon pawing through the scrap—hunks of precious metal sparkled at me from cracked and broken fittings. I’d have suggested preserving the tech, but whatever polymer-based hydrocarbon material they were using had long degraded into unusable, crumbling slop.
Trailing my nails over the bits and pieces drew my attention to vibrant colors in metal I’d not noted since I’d been in a Revulon body. It appeared that Naleucians had that strong affinity for it, too. So much so that it mesmerized me.
Perhaps it wasn’t the metals, though. Something nagged at the back of my mind, an uneasy buzzing like the bond I held with Doc but different. “Merriel, can you call Vil in or have him patched through?”
“On it, Sarge.” Merriel made more of the pointless beeping and booping before Vil’s voice broke over a nearby speaker.
“’Sup?”
“You and Noel having an argument or something?” I scratched at my chest and shivered, the sensation going all the way to my tail.
“No. Why?” Vil snorted as if my plight were funny. “He always gets his way.”
“I do,” Noel added.
“Nexus okay?” It was the only other progenitor in the ship that carried a bond—at least with his parents, so I might as well have asked.
“He’s with Gorm. He’s teaching him about the ship’s reactor.” Noel snorted as if it were a completely normal thing to teach a months-old child.
I hesitated. “We sure that’s a good idea?”
Gorm could be…roughly spoken. For lack of a better word.
“Probably not, but the crew knows what will befall the invertebrate that harms a scale on his precious body.” Noel huffed, but any of us felt that way about the scamp.
“Then why do I feel so antsy and itchy, like my receptors are catching static?” I stepped away from the scrap and tapped my feet on the floor a few times and touched a nearby metal handle to see if static clung to me.Nope.
“Maybe you should go check on your mate after he’s done with Wallace?” Vil asked, his tone almost amused, which pissed me off.
“Doc is focused on something and frustrated, which means, it would be a bad idea for me to intervene. I can tell the difference between this and him.” More frustration than I meant to eked from my voice, and my tail slapped the ground sharply. Being away from Doc hurt at times and I wanted to be back in our den, curled up in our nest. Our family was safe there.
“Well, unless there’s another Naleucian on board, you’re just being paranoid.” The amusement in Vil’s voice was palpable, and I wanted to march up there and slap him.
“Assholes,” I grumbled before signaling for Merriel to end the transmission. I had things to focus on and their amusement at my inability to regulate my own body was low on the list of priorities.
I moved from containers of waste metal to a box I was on better footing with—interesting things. I was well-versed in Revulon tech from the era, so I sat on the floor and dumped a small tub at my feet before crossing my legs and plucking through it.
Most of it was junk, odd bits of joinery or what looked suspiciously like a masturbatory aid—which for Revulons was a whole-ass process that could take days, necessitated paid leave, and could result in permanent damage… Needless to say, itwasworth it. I tossed the mangled bit of metal to the side and shuddered at how it would be used on my new body. After all, Revulon orgasms paled in comparison to Naleucian.
It baffled me how their population needed to spread when sex was so amazing.
At any rate, I found a fidget toy meant for three hands, made of a series of interlocking rings and without much thought, brought my tail over to work the puzzle in amusement. I’d had a few like it before, but those days were long gone and I didn’t mourn the old body any longer. There were parts of that body I missed as well as my human one. But every passing minute, the memories grew duller. We utilized our host’s inoperative brain to host memories and only retained key elements of them ourselves.
As I’d done before, I gathered another tub of curiosities and separated utter junk from amusing bits and a third pile of things with value. Sealed microcanisters of a recreational drug theyused would be interesting. It was nonaddictive to most carbon-based oxygen-breathing species and had a relatively short half-life. If any of it had survived, Doc could synthesize it. The art on the canisters was neat, at any rate, the carvings a vivid pattern made from tiny scratches.
When an oblong metal bearing tumbled into my hand, I traced my nails over the ovoid surface. And for the first time, my body’s brain sent a message back to me, the connection sparking to life.
I lived through an abstract memory, fuzzy at the edges as my hands cradled the bearing to my chest. A bright-red egg lay in my hands, a beautiful thing that made my heart swell. That familiar buzzing sensation in my memory hit me there so much harder than it did on the ship.
A voice that sounded like Shafa spoke, the words twisting into meaning in my mind. Naleucian was difficult at the best of times, but I focused. “I am sorry, little one. You will not know me, but I will always know you.”
