Odyssey (The Spiral Slayers Book 3)

by Rusty Williamson

  This new symbiotic relationship would be handed down, catch on with both species, slowly spread and survive for millions of years.

  PART Two – The Blackship

  “Every end means a new beginning and every beginning foreshadows a new end.”

  Dimerities (ancient Amular philosopher 924-1008)

  Chapter Eight – The Spiral Slayers

  “Mutations will be both good and bad but none would really be beneficial to survival. Detrimental mutations would be the only ones with any evolutionary impact. So, over such a vast length of time, you’d either wind up with a grossly mutated population or, perhaps more likely, the species would have evolved itself into extinction.”

  Admiral Adamarus Maximus

  Source: The Archive

  Finally, after 5.5 million light years, Nemesis reached the Hydron Group. That had equated to 25,614 ship-years and 41 experienced-years. The six spiral galaxies and one elliptical galaxy was a tight group. The central spiral was huge and was slowly devouring all its neighbors.

  The Blackship was easily detectable on the Tachyon scope. It was headed for the large central galaxy.

  “That’s going to upset the entire group,” Dora said.

  Victor rubbed his chin, “Perhaps not… the amount of matter won’t change.”

  “Well, I guess that’s true.”

  Adamarus frowned. They all knew that wasn’t true but they could not let that out of the bag. The entire group was going to be disrupted but why discuss it.

  ---

  Inside the Blackship was a series of huge caverns just like the Whiteship, but that was as far as the similarity went. Within the huge caverns, in darkness, among a tapestry of soft tweets, squawks and splashing, filth flew through the thin atmosphere as the hoard went about ship’s duties. The sea of filth they trekked through contained their waste. The mold that grew upon their excrement was their food. The fumes made ripples in the air and no human could have survived the foul atmosphere. But, for the Slayers, a nice simple arrangement.

  The sea of filth was maintained at a depth of 15 feet, so only their long dual stick-legs and the bottoms of their bodies were submerged. This was because the only hole into their bodies was located there at the bottom and it provided for both food intake as well as waste output. The same hole also used a rough tube which ran to the top of their small bird like heads to breathe and provide communications. Another nice simple arrangement.

  Their bodies were pasty white except where their undersides were stained dark red from the sea they trudged through. Their heads were small bird like things hardly there at all.

  The cavernous area around them was vast and dark. Distant walls contained huge arches leading to other chambers. The walls themselves were hidden under millions of years, ergo hundreds of feet of hardened excrement and blackened mold.

  In the corner of the vast chamber was a dais and, on the dais, oval holographic viewers surrounded a large stone seat. On that seat sat The-One.

  Larger and with a more defined head then the workers rushing through the shallow sea below, The-One rushed nowhere. Unlike the hoard’s small black eyes, The-One had two red eyes that almost circled its entire bird-like head.

  The-One had another distinguishing feature, the top of its bird-like head had been burned away and was a mass of ugly scars.

  On one of the oval viewers, The-One had seen what it expected to see. So, success. So, prep for the next one.

  It looked down at the hoard madly splashing through their food/waste. It drew in a breath, and its stomach swelled up. Then it opened its short thick beak and squawked loudly. The command was far shriller than all the other sounds and it echoed through all the neighboring chambers.

  Everything went quiet, and all motion stopped. Only the filth dripping from the arches and walls could be heard.

  Then, a single creature, a special one called The-One-That-Waits started making its way towards the The-One. Cutting its way through the hoard The-One-That-Waits reached the dais.

  The-One slowly looked its way then squawked again.

  Translation: “Begin the next selection process.”

  The-One-That-Waits chirped back then turned to do the master’s bidding.

  After a second the hoard continued with their duties and the splashing and chatter resumed.

  ---

  Only a few were going under with Admiral Maximus. The large chamber, filled with hibernation pods, was vast and still.

  Adamarus shook Radin’s hand and smiled, “You have the con.”

  “I have the con, see you on the other side,” Radin said.

  “Don’t remind me. Probability fold in your favor,” Adamarus said.

  Radin left for the bridge, and Adamarus walked to his hibernation pod.

  “Good evening sir,” the tech said.

  “Evening.”

  The tech helped Adamarus into the pod and soon… sleep took him…

  After the bombing of Anderson Station, Adamarus and Evelyn had gotten trapped in an emergency escape pod. They had brushed the atmosphere then skipped away two more times—the intervals in between getting shorter. Both times had been jarring and painful, but they had gotten through it without being knocked out. One or two more times, and the capsule would go in for keeps and burn up and that would be that. They both knew it though neither spoke of it. They just silently held each other tightly.

  Both of them were scared, and both were aroused, but the fear was greater. Evelyn’s breasts had come loose and her nipples were hard and erect, pressing against Adamarus’ rib cage. Adamarus was also erect and pressing against her leg. Their entire bodies seemed to be pulsating.

  Adamarus closed his eyes. Their situation was ridiculous.

  “I don’t want to die,” Evelyn said then asked, “Will it hurt?”

  When the capsule came apart, it would be quick, but he knew before that happened… they would literally cook as the temperature rose. “It will be quick,” was all he said.

  Sooner than before the vibration started up again.

  They stared at each other.

  Then the sand blasting sound came.

  Her lips trembled, a tear rolled from her eye. “Adamarus…do you think that it’s possible…” her voice caught, “to…to be in love with two people at the same time?” she asked.

  He took a long time to respond. Finally, “I guess it must be.”

  “I love you,” she blurted and kissed him …and he kissed her back.

  “I love you too,” he heard himself say.

  The hissing grew louder and louder until it became a roar. Soon there was an indistinct burning smell accompanied by a noticeable rise in the temperature.

  Evelyn broke away with a sharp intake of breath. There was terror in her eyes. “Can you smell that?” Evelyn asked above the noise, her voice shaking.

  Adamarus could…a new metallic scent not there before. It was getting hot—both of them were starting to sweat. He noticed that there was smoke in the air. Some new level had been reached. “You always smell the burning,” he said as calmly as he could.

  But it was getting very hot.

  The sphere was jarred, and they were both thrown upward, stretching the webbing, which then slammed them back down upon the padding. Adamarus’ weight had tossed him higher and brought him down faster causing Evelyn to flip and fall partially on top of Adamarus. As the roar grew into a deafening screech, they held each other tightly, both now soaked in sweat, both knowing this was it.

  “I don’t want to die,” Evelyn repeated, her voice trembling.

  He pulled her closer, “Shhhh, everything’s all right…there’s nothing to fear.”

  And for a moment she was taken away to a time when she was so small and someone held her and said something very much like that…long, long ago.

  Again, the sphere lurched and spun and Adamarus and Evelyn were propelled up and then slammed back down again. Then they were kissing again—frantically this time as the sphere lurched back and fo
rth and began to fall apart.

  There was a loud boom, and they both jerked their heads toward the sound. To the left, a large section of the sphere had buckled inward, tearing several of the padded reinforcements away. The padding was starting to burn.

  “Ohhhhh…” Evelyn keened.

  Adamarus placed his hand on her cheek, “It’s okay, it’s okay.” They looked at each other.

  She said, “We’re going to die now,” and suddenly she reached down and took him.

  Then, they were making love! As the capsule burned around them! He remembered her hair catching fire as they ended.

  Blackness… drifting…

  A deafening clang and scraping.

  Adamarus awoke to a hoarse rasping sound. Then he was gasping for air, each breath filled with agony. The pain was everywhere and so bad that it seemed to pass through him and over him like cold water too horrific to acknowledge. He had trouble opening his eyes. When he finally managed it, he heard the croaking sound again.

  “Adamarus.”

  Another deafening clang and scraping sound. Everything shuddered, and the spinning walls barely visible through the debris and smoke slowed then came to a stop.

  He tried to look around, but it was too painful to move. Smoke, ashes and half-burned debris swirled around him as scattered fires and eruptions of electrical sparks lit the capsule interior.

  Through the flotsam and smoke, a black form materialized. He could not imagine what this thing could be and then he saw a red gash in it open.

  “Adamarus.”

  Above the red gash, a single eye emerged from the charred blackness. “Oh…” he cried out. He reached out to the carbonized form and screamed as the charred flesh of his arms cracked and broke away and he watched in horror as the black chunks floated away. He was just like the horrible apparition before him…just like…who? Her?

  He shuttered in pain again as something grabbed both his outstretched hands. Looking up, he saw that the thing that was Evelyn was holding both his charred red, blistered hands. He looked at what had been her face. Closer he could see that there were areas of color between the carbonized areas…dark red, white pulp, blisters. Her once beautiful hair was all gone…burned away. The red slit moved again. The horrible croaking sound came again.

  “We didn’t die. I’m so sorry. So sorry.”

  He just stared at the black thing before him, confused and speechless as darkness encroached from the edges of his vision.

  That one ungodly eye and terrible red slit pulled in closer. The red slit opened and moved…the tortured sound reached him, “Adamarus…listen…listen to me. Open your eyes and listen to my voice. It…it never happened. It was just a dream. Never happened. Do you hear me, Adamarus…it never happened…that’s all…never…hap …”

  Adamarus was so confused. He had no idea what she was talking about. He no longer had any idea where or who he was as the darkness closed in and swallowed him. Then, seemingly forever, he floated in thoughtless pain and horror.

  Red light flooded Adamarus’ vision.

  He woke up breathing hard.

  Adamarus had not remembered all of their ordeals before now. He had not remembered them making love. The nanites had reopened that pathway and now he remembered it all.

  ---

  With Nemesis’ increased speed came increased cosmic rays and particle bombardment. Therefore, mutation levels continued to increase and so did the speed of evolution. 44,000 years was seeing increased advancement in many species but none like the one species of bees known as the Red Stinger bees.

  The dusty time had passed, and the fields were once again blessed with rain and new growth. The dirt would get wet, turn to mud and then slowly harden.

  The bee with the dance-name of d-nya loved drawing in the soft mud. d-bet only knew why, but it had been that way since she was small. She drew flowers, trees, and even birds and other animals.

  As she matured, d-nya learned to make reliefs in the dirt of the animals and flowers. One day she found she could make scratches in the dirt walls near the river. This opened new vistas to her.

  d-zoe, d-nya’s partner loved to watch d-nya draw and carve and tried it herself though she was not as good as d-nya.

  One day d-nya carved d-zoe’s likeness into the river’s dirt wall, but she made it a hundred times larger than d-zoe. Others saw it and soon it got the attention of many in the hive.

  d-zoe, her partner, demonstrated the flowers she had learned how to draw from d-nya and within days, d-nya was a teacher with a class of seven counting d-zoe.

  Over time her class grew, and word of this reached the queen.

  Eventually, in the fullness of time, d-nya would also have her own dream dance to carry art down the generations.

  ---

  Nemesis approached the Hydron group. Everyone was in hibernation except Adamarus, Radin and the three other bridge crew.

  Ahead of them were six widely spaced spiral galaxies. They were now certain which one the Blackship was going to. Now they needed to make a target selection that wouldn’t take them too far off a course that would look like they were chasing the Blackship.

  “So,” Adamarus said to all, “we leave us on our current course for now. In four hibernation cycles, we go into lock down again and do it.”

  They all agreed and returned to the hibernation chamber to wake up the next cycle and put themselves down.

  ---

  It was on the third wake cycle that Adamarus and Evelyn were both cycled out of hiber-sleep.

  Later that day Adamarus caught up with her in an empty corridor.

  He just looked at her a moment then said, “I’ve remembered. Everything.”

  Her face went red and her mouth opened, but nothing came out.

  “I understand, and I’m okay with it… if you care.”

  Her mind spun, and she realized the reason she’d avoided him all this time was… she couldn’t tell him and she would have to. Now the problem was solved? She finally spoke, her voice shook, “I’m glad you know.”

  He walked up to her and took her in his arms.

  She didn’t resist and put her arms around him.

  They kissed.

  They spent the night in Adamarus’ quarters. The next day Evelyn took her place on bridge duty.

  ---

  After 53,735 years of migrating and spreading the bees and wasps had taken over wide extents of the Atrium. Although occasional wasp attacks had been going on for some time, all-out war had been avoided due to terrain and natural barriers. Now, however, their competing territories had come to meet at the extreme west end.

  The wasps had come from the Western Desert and spread throughout the Willard Memorial Forest which surrounded Mount Willard.

  Across the desert from the wasps, the bees had spread from South Forests, jumped the South Howie Mountains to the Southwest Forest. And so, the vast Southern Desert separated the wasps and bees for thousands of years.

  However, when the bees jumped the west side of the South Howie’s only Blue Lake’s ten-mile width separated the two species. And a hundred years later when the bees jumped a three-mile gorge and spread through the Pocket Patch—a small thick forest at the extreme west end—two dense populations of bees and wasps were separated only by the Western Gorge’s eight-miles of badlands.

  Two natural enemies were on the cusp of the largest war the Atrium had ever seen.

  It was the bees who discovered the wasps and the bees who crossed the Western Gorge in force to clean out what they thought was a small concentration of wasps. They did not know that this small concentration only got denser for the next hundred miles and that just the local wasps outnumbered the bee’s force a thousand to one.

  And so, it was around noon time when 160,000 bees gathered silently at the edge of the Western Gorge and began the crossing. They stayed low, many of them walking and they crept across the eight miles. They paused just outside the opposite ridge of the gorge and spread out to encircle the wasps. The
n they took the wasps completely by surprise with a furious attack.

  Since the time of d-bet, all bees sanded off their stinger barbs so they could sting and sting again. It didn’t matter, the wasps just kept coming and coming and coming.

  All afternoon the battle raged. Then the wasps got behind the bees cutting off their retreat. The bee force was literally pushed back against the western wall just under the track that the sunlight traveled along.

  An ancient covered staircase led up from the ground to a maintenance shed at the base of the sunlight track. The remaining 100,000 bees took refuge within this staircase.

  But the crazed wasps were relentless. They pushed the bees up the staircase, into the maintenance shed and onto the tracks and kept killing and pushing. The sunlight was at the 4:00pm position when the battle reached it.

  The bees were pushed into the light. Their bodies were crushed, and even when all of the bees were dead, wasps were pushed, and crushed by other wasps behind them.

  Their blood and body parts slowly seeped into the sunlight’s electrical connections as the senseless bloodlust continued. Finally, with a huge arc of electricity, the sunlight shorted out and the entire Atrium fell into total darkness.

  The wasps finally stopped attacking.

  ---

  Radin turned, as Adamarus entered the bridge, and proudly announced, “We have a candidate.”

  A full bridge crew was on duty. Adamarus nodded to each one and smiled at Evelyn—everyone knew they were together now. “Okay. Talk to me.”

  Radin looked down at his station, “The planet is very Amular-like, in the bio-zone, lots of plants and water. Can’t tell more from this distance but Bugs has been bugging me to test Basin transfer of the singularity, no pun intended, plus, we could use fresh supplies and… the science department wants to do a survey.”

  Adamarus raised an eyebrow, “Anything else?”

  “I wouldn’t mind some R and R myself.” Radin chuckled.

  “Okay, show me,” Adamarus said as he looked up at the main holograph. A circle appeared around a star not far off their course. And, Adamarus thought, I don’t want to go too far out of the way.