by Regine Abel
I glanced at Bane who had stopped in front of Pahiven and was holding her face between his hands while gently talking to her. I couldn’t hear his words from here, but I could guess he was likely apologizing for failing to save her before it was too late. Despite the pain that would never leave me, I couldn’t begin to fathom Bane’s. His mother—Wrath’s first human Soulcatcher—had endured a similar fate at the hands of his father, the General. It would never be enough for Bane that he had saved most of the few surviving Mimics in the entire galaxy. Each one that was lost was a permanent scar on his hearts.
But how could I console him, I who carried a similar burden?
A familiar sound pulled me away from my dark musings as Stran came running in, covered in Kryptid blood, his midnight blue eyes gleaming with predatory joy at the sight of so many eggs. He gave me a psychic nudge then immediately balled up and proceeded to bowl through the eggs. Only about twenty percent of them made that screeching sound, having matured enough to have been close to hatching. Their squeals pulled Bane out of his mourning trance, and he walked alongside me in Stran’s path of destruction to finish off any larvae that might have survived getting trampled by the Creckel.
We cleared the room in no time at all with the aid of Varnog joining us. There was no joy or thrill of battle as we completed this chore in a more solemn fashion. Once done, Bane severed the egg sac attached to Pahiven. It was at least a small measure of comfort that he knew how to do it without causing her pain—not that she would have probably felt anything in her current vegetative state. After handling the contents of the egg sac, we quietly left the room, hatred burning deep in our hearts for the General.
We entered the nurseries through the backdoors from the Egg Room. It took seconds to realize the larvae had been divided among three rooms based on their level of mutation, the first room being normal—at least in appearance—and the last room being the most mutated, but not feral. Stacked five rows high in little horizontal alcoves, the larvae were bound, probably to prevent them attacking the Workers should they suddenly turn while being fed or tended to. That made our job easier. Not wasting any time, we just blasted them all to pieces.
We were just finishing the last room when we heard the incoming footsteps of Doom, Wrath, Tremak, Orion, and Reaper.
“You’re too late,” I told him when he stepped into the room.
“Well, fuck,” Doom grumbled, earning him a half-hearted smile from me.
He immediately sobered and squeezed my shoulder in a sympathetic and encouraging gesture. For all his cockiness and boasting, Doom was a compassionate and gentle soul, and one of my most beloved brothers. He knew instinctively when something in the field of battle adversely affected any one of us and always knew just how to handle it.
“Come on,” Doom said in a soft voice. “Let’s go deal with the Workers so that we can bring you back to your woman, and I can go home to mine.”
“Now that sounds like a good plan,” I said, my smile broadening.
I resisted the urge to psychically poke my woman as we headed towards the large doors at the back leading to the Gathering Hall. While Veterans occasionally took liberties to nudge their significant others during battle, rules demanded we keep communications strictly to mission related topics and, as Sabra was still an Aspirant, I had to set a good example for her.
As soon as I opened the door, the Workers cowered in fear, hanging on to each other and pressing themselves against the walls as far away from us as possible. Only a handful of Elder Workers stood their ground. One on the left gave me an intense stare.
“It’s me,” Shuria said telepathically, confirming what I had suspected.
I averted my eyes not to draw attention to her.
“Do not fear,” I said in Universal to the sixty or so female Kryptids assembled in the room. “We have no intentions of harming any of you. We came here to destroy Khutu’s twisted creations and be on our way.”
“You have destroyed the eggs and larvae?” asked one of the bolder Elder Workers standing in the center of the room.
“Yes, Lekla,” Bane said with a contempt that took me by surprise. “We’ve obliterated yet another set of abominations you’ve been forced to look after. Well, except for Queen Pahiven that one of you will need to take care of.”
“I will,” Shuria quickly offered, moving one step forward.
“But—” Lekla started saying, a somewhat outraged expression on her narrow face.
“But nothing,” Bane said in a harsh voice. “Go,” he added, gesturing with his head for Shuria to get moving.
She didn’t hesitate. We parted and Shuria—in her Kryptid form—quickly walked between us, looking properly cowed before hastening down the hallway.
“Tell me, Lekla,” Bane said, tilting his head to the side. “Did you have as much fun putting down the defective larvae and young mutants as you did killing my brothers and beating me?”
I stiffened, realizing finally that she’d been one of the nurses that had ‘raised’ him and his brothers aboard the Brides Ship, many of whom had been abusive to the young hybrids they had considered aberrations.
A sliver of fear flittered over her features, before she lifted her chin defiantly. The other Workers subtly moved away from her, sensing things might go south for the older female.
“As a matter of fact, I did,” she said, brazenly, holding his gaze without flinching. “More, even. Your mere existence was treason against Queen Aitxa, but at least, you were mostly obedient and capable of rational thinking, unlike those mindless abominations that keep tainting the Kryptid breeds. So, kill me if you must. I do not fear your revenge.”
For half a second, I feared Bane would call her bluff, but he snorted instead.
“You are not worth the energy I would expend to spill your blood,” the young Dragon said. “But I am curious about one thing. You’re standing here in self-righteous indignation that beings such as my brothers and I should exist. And yet, here you still are helping the General create more. You’re as much a traitor as he is. Queen Aitxa’s blood is on your hands as well.”
“We didn’t approve of your existence, but we believed the General was doing this for the colony, for the people,” Lekla argued with confidence. “However, the events on Zekuro have proven he’s only in this for himself. And you have made it worse.”
“Me?” Bane asked, stunned.
“How the fuck did he make things worse?” I asked. “By not playing studs for that demented fuck?”
Lekla snorted. “Oh no! Escaping when he did saved the hybrid,” the elder female said with contempt. “You see, for some sick reason, the General always thought Bane to be perfect, except for his weakness towards the human breeders.” She turned to give Bane an assessing look laced with some begrudging respect. “I admit you had us fooled. I didn’t believe the General when he mentioned you felt loyalty towards his ‘brides.’ You hid it well. So, he was quite upset when you slipped through his fingers before you had served your purpose.”
It was Bane’s turn to snort in disbelief. “Khutu couldn’t possibly have wanted me to sire those ‘Super Soldiers’ on the Mimics. They would have been loyal to me, not him.”
“That’s exactly what he wanted,” Lekla answered smugly. She laughed when we all exchanged baffled looks. She glanced at another elder female next to her. “Toksi, tell the intruders what the General had you working on for the past three years.”
The female shifted nervously on her feet and clasped her hands in front of her while eyeing us warily.
“I was assigned to the Grotra Project,” Toksi said. “Doppelganger would be the equivalent in your language.” Although she spoke to us in Kryptid, she’d said Doppelganger in Universal. “With some grafts from the Honawi spiders—the main splice among many other things—the recipient can inject a venom that liquefies his target’s insides that he can then drink. In turn, it allows him to rewrite his own DNA once by absorbing that of his prey. We had great results with multiple subjects
and expected to be only a few months shy from calling it a success when the move to Zekuro was suddenly ordered, forcing us to look at accelerating the process.”
My blood turned to ice in my veins as understanding dawned on us.
“Khutu was going to get a graft so that he could absorb Bane’s DNA,” I whispered, horrified. “He would have become him, and the ‘Super Soldiers’ would have been loyal to him.”
“Now you get it,” Lekla said smugly.
“That’s insane!” Reaper said, looking at his brother with the same horror I felt.
“Hardly,” Lekla countered with a shrug. “You hybrids are young, you can fly, soul-transfer, shift into lethal battle forms, and above all, you have a lifespan of two hundred years. Bane is barely a year or two over thirty. That would give General Khutu close to one hundred and seventy years to perfect the Grotra procedure and become immortal, switching to a greater, more powerful body, each time his current one begins to falter. In case you haven’t noticed, his current body has far exceeded its intended life expectancy.”
“But that can’t work! That is not how it works. We have Shells. If merely changing to a younger, fresher body could keep one going indefinitely, we would already be immortal,” I argued, waving at Wrath, Orion, and the two Dragons by my side. “We die when we reach two hundred years because our soul grows tired.”
“The General disagrees,” Lekla deadpanned. “According to him, it is not your soul that tires, but your DNA. After all, your Shells are all made from the same DNA because your soul will not accept a corporeal vessel that isn’t exactly identical to the one it was born into. But if your soul willingly transitions into a new body, with fresh, young DNA through Grotra, then it will live forever.”
I shuddered, unable to counter that argument as it had indeed been raised that it was our DNA aging that brought about our eventual true deaths. After the passing of Dr. Xi—our father and creator—and the destruction of all the Xian embryos, scientists had studied ways to allow our souls to accept new Shells of different DNA to keep us alive if no new Warrior could ever be born. Thankfully, that problem had been resolved with us finding our human soulmates.
“Things were crazy enough, but then you had to make them worse by coming to Zekuro with those parasites!” Lekla snarled, pointing an angry finger at Varnog and Tremak.
The two Scelks immediately bared their teeth and took a menacing step towards the Kryptid female, their claws jutting out of their fingertips. The two Dragons stopped them, Reaper placing a hand on Tremak’s shoulder and Bane raising his arm in front of Varnog to block his path.
“And why is that?” Bane asked in an icy tone.
“Because, after Janaur, the General had abandoned that project, thinking the Scelks had gone feral due to hormonal changes at physical puberty, as had been witnessed during early testing,” Lekla said with a baleful glare at Varnog. “Like the rest of us, he had truly believed the Scelks had been a failure and had been relieved when you exterminated them. But on Zekuro, he saw your betrayal and what a powerful use you’ve made of these parasites. And now he—”
An alarm resounded in the facility, startling us. Seconds later, the two giant screens in the Gathering Hall lit up, displaying the foul face of General Khutu. I glanced left at the sound of quickly approaching footsteps to see Shuria in her Kryptid form returning to us.
“My dearest sons,” the General said looking in turn at Bane then Reaper, “it seems like your treachery is infectious. To think even my most devoted Workers should speak of rebellion is quite hurtful.”
Although I listened to his words, a terrible sense of dread washed over me. I psychically reached out to my mate. Her mind was sluggish, not like when she was sleeping, but wrapped in the drowsiness of the unnatural unconsciousness caused by drugs or a stun blast. My blood turned to acid at the dreadful realization I refused to accept.
“What have you done?” I snarled, taking a menacing step towards the screen.
“Me?” Khutu asked with fake innocence. “I’ve only taken back what you’d stolen from me. He leaned forward and picked up something that was offscreen. The camera zoomed out, showing more of what looked like a medical bay. My blood curdled at the sight of Tabitha, naked and unconscious in his arms. “I should thank you, my son, for bringing me fresh, new brides, and your own Queen, no less.”
Tilting Tabitha’s head to the side, he parted his large mandibles, then slowly licked her mantle—the black chitin scales along her neck and shoulders that had formed following her bonding with Bane.
“Just imagine how much more beautiful she will be once my own scales are added to yours, and on the others,” Khutu taunted. “They will look good on those Black-skinned females you’ve brought me.”
“Get your ship here, NOW!” I ordered Doom, kicking myself for having recommended we keep his ship at the rendezvous point to avoid increasing our risk of detection with too many ships stealthing here.
“Already on it, brother. ETA twenty minutes,” Doom responded grimly.
The General gestured with his head to someone offscreen. The camera shifted towards a female that I didn’t know but who was clearly a modified Mimic with cybernetic implants in her face and neck, towering over my mate’s unconscious form. I felt faint. This couldn’t be happening. Not again. Not with her.
“Temrin!” Shuria breathed out, shock and disbelief plastered all over her Kryptid features.
The General and the other Kryptid females turned stunned gazes towards her.
“What have you done to her?” Shuria asked, her voice dripping with pain and hatred. “What have you done to my sister?”
Khutu’s multifaceted eyes widened with understanding seconds before Shuria shifted to her Mimic form.
“Temrin, it’s me. It’s Shuria. Talk to me!” she pleaded, but Temrin remained stoic and emotionless, like the machine she’d become. “You… I’m going to kill you for this,” she hissed at the General.
“Oh Shuria, you were always the smartest of your sisters and so full of promises. But you turned out to be such a disappointment,” Khutu said. “You couldn’t seduce my son, and you couldn’t serve my interests. I have no more use for you. I’ve gotten all I needed from you Mimics. If you survive what’s incoming, I suggest you don’t shapeshift too often. Using your new form’s abilities—”
“Drains my lifeforce, I’m well aware,” Shuria said in a sharp voice, interrupting him. “I’ve seen what it has done to Pahiven. But have no fear you vermin, I’m saving enough of it to come after you.”
Khutu chuckled. “Like I said, you were always the smartest. Time for me to go. Farewell, you treacherous Workers. Farewell, Warriors. As for you, my dearest sons, if you survive what’s coming, come see me and my new brides on Kryptor… Bring the Scelks.”
“If you touch any of them—”
“What will you do?” Khutu snarled, interrupting Bane. “We are already airborne, and you have company coming… right… now.”
Just as he spoke those words, the distant thunder of stampeding feet reached us from the hallway.
“You will bring back our females, or I will tear your minds to shreds,” Varnog hissed with such rage, I would have been troubled had our situation not been so dire.
“Your females?” Khutu asked, intrigued. “You have a mate among my new brides or a female you covet?”
Varnog didn’t get a chance to answer.
“Shields up!” I yelled while taking a defensive position near the large entrance of the Gathering Hall.
My brothers immediately took up their position by my side at the sight of the shambling throngs of rabid mutants coming down the hall. Part Mimics, part Kryptids, some with limbs from other creatures they’d partially managed to morph into, they were coming at us, growling and with murder in their eyes. Whatever doubts remained had been erased: Khutu was done with this operation and leaving his failures to kill his enemies or to be killed by them.
The female Kryptids further pressed themselves again
st the back walls, whimpering in terror. Stran dashed forward, crushing the mutants he could. However, to my great shock, some of them jumped over him using their three-segment legs to keep single-mindedly running towards us.
“Varnog?” I asked when the frontrunners failed to slow down.
“I can’t,” the Scelk said with a tensed voice. “They’re mindless like the Drone Swarm. We cannot control mindless or feral creatures.”
FUCK!
We braced for impact, shooting everything we had at them, from mouth darts and poisoned needles, to blaster fire. But they were too many, coming too fast. The impact against our shields was jarring. We shoved them back, the whole-time hacking and slashing at them with our scythed-limbs and stabbing them with our scorpion tail stingers. Bane and Reaper flew right above us to knock back the mutants that attempted to climb over the corpses and jump over our heads to attack us from behind. Stran kept rolling back and forth through the masses but quickly found himself stuck by too many bodies to be able to move.
Worse still, our shields were rapidly depleting. Soon we would be overwhelmed.
I cannot die like this. Not before I save my mate.
A whitish sphere flew over my shield from behind and struck one of the mutants. The point of impact immediately started bubbling and hissing as if affected by acid. The mutant began to screech and claw at its face. Seconds later, many more of those little spheres were lobbed into the swarm. A brief glance over my shoulder showed me the Workers, their fingers elongated into those terrifying needles, pricking at white mucus being regurgitated between their small mandibles, hardening it into those spheres before they lobbed them at our attackers.
They had realized we were losing this battle and were fighting their natural instinct to cower to instead join our efforts in what capacity they could. Unfortunately, I didn’t believe it would be enough. I’d already swapped my first shield for my spare, and this one, too, would soon collapse. And then, it would all be over.