Page 7 of The First Omega Made
“Guys, I think we need to put a pause on this and go back. Let’s send an ROP instead.” We should have sent a remotely operated probe from the beginning, but only having audiovisual cues didn’t do that much good.
“Why?” Vil stomped by me and I eyed the ripple along the slime.
“I don’t like the way this slime mold looks. I think it’s a faniculum. Merriel, you have any data on these guys?” I pointedly looked toward the rippling mass spidering out over the walls and earned a chuckle from the hapless operating system.
“Just that they’re carnivorous and infectious… Guess that tells us what happened to the last residents. Haunted by grossfoot fungus.” Everything had to be haunted with Merriel. In a way, it was almost as endearing as Noel’s—
“Space slime.” Noel kept his distance, his tail flicking idly. “Nope.”
He glanced at Vil, and the two appeared to be sharing one of those telekinetic conversations. Vil shrugged.
“Threat is low priority. Continue exploration.” Noel rolled his head from side to side, likely cracking his neck. The mic didn’t pick up on it.
“Well, it’s as good of a way to die as any,” I muttered under my breath.
“Bonerkill, dude.” Merriel clicked his nonexistent tongue. I’d learned not to broadcast everything I said over air, but Merriel always listened. It was a bug we’d never managed to break because Merriel just changed his code and eavesdropped all over again.
I sighed heavily, wasting precious air in my oxide decomposition chamber pack. I instinctively checked the device on my hip. Liquid oxygen was too volatile and bulky to tote around. Pelletized oxides distributed through water and electrified produced an abundance of useable oxygen if done the correct way. Storing it was easier, too.
I checked the salinity of my pack—verifying the chamber had enough time left. I twisted a knob to adjust my oxygen output and continued after them.
It felt like a small eternity as we followed Noel and Vil, the two instinctively aware of something deeper in the base. I swore to the progenitors themselves—the devils my people knew them to be—that if they found another Naleucian, I’d throw myself out of an airlock.
When we finally came across a sign down a corroded hall, I stared at the barcode sigil of a language. “Merriel, translate.”
I didn’t need him. I could read it easily.Armory.
“No clue. I don’t have a full codex of Didexicul Revulon. I knowwhatit is, but not how to read it.”
Vil and Noel stared at it, blank-faced. Noel, in his ever-present wisdom, kicked at the door, denting it in its frame with a loud crunch. Two more consecutive kicks had the door falling off its hinges and clattering onto the dirty floor. He peered in, dust and spores kicking up around him. “Armory.”
I could have told you that.I didn’t, though. My host didn’t know the language—but I did. I placed my hand over my chest, hand spread as my true body squirmed.
There was no reason for me to know that dialect of Revulon. Not one several hundred solar rotations long gone. Not one that humans lacked the intelligence to comprehend.
After all, the Revulon built their war bases on the ruins of the Naleucians, and considered my kind their mortal enemies. A parasite. Colthraxians were the bane of the universe and long considered extinct or forgotten.
Untrue. I exist.
There were more of my kind, maybe? We’d long ago vowed to stop taking lives. The host we kept was our last. As a species, our existence was wrong. It was immoral for us to continue on.
Even if I had someone I cared about.
I strolled in after Vil and our companions forged in, standing loosely by Noel as he glanced around. Controls and things had odd shapes, and the floors were textured, as if the people who lived there once didn’t have dexterous feet. His eyes narrowed as he kicked the dirt on the floor around. “Hmm. Space crabs.”
How he’d come to the conclusion of what the Revulon were with that little information, I didn’t know, but he did have the superior intellect of a pure-blooded Naleucian. It hit me, oddly, that Vil could do that, too. He had that much intellect…and used it to fuck.
He used to fuck anything. Not anymore. I didn’t even know if they could add a third to form a true triad, what with Vil’s anatomy.
My species didn’t mate or pair. We regurgitated reproductive material into the mouth of another infected host and laid eggs then abandoned them to hatch in the corpse of our host as we found another.
I shuddered. I’d never bred before, refused to do so, never would, and as the last I heard—none of our people ever would.
Noel gave me a sidelong glance. “This bothers you.”
I shrugged. “The mold stuff icks me out.”
Noel grunted in half acknowledgment. He always kept a wary eye on me, as if he detested humans. I prayed he didn’t notice I was different. My body mimicked the exact function of a heart, pulsing in synch to my host. I needed only eat my host’s heart slowly and take its place. He didn’t seem to be wise to what I was, or if I was different. Or he didn’t care.
