Vitalis Omnibus

by Jason Halstead

  One of the creatures hands brushed across her belly, making the murderous beasts within flutter.

  “Nononononono,” Fiona chanted until the new breed of spitter brought a piece of raw flesh to her mouth. She tried to close her lips but it had already pushed it in. The juice of the meat forced her body to betray her. She chewed and swallowed it, then opened her mouth and turned her head like a hatchling trying to beg its mother for food. The spitter obliged, feeding her more of the meat until she felt sated.

  Fiona slumped back onto the cruel rock floor. She stared up at the ceiling, tears runnings from her eyes. It was impossible, what had happened. She felt the spasms as the life within her began to receive the fresh nutrients.

  Movement drew her eyes towards the spitter. Two smaller creatures had accompanied it into the cave. They now pushed up to her, one climbing up and over her. She stared, disbelieving, as the swarthy but almost completely human-looking toddlers each crawled onto her sore and swollen breasts to nurse.

  Now she prayed for death to take her, but she knew it wouldn’t. Vitalis had changed her beyond what she’d believed possible. She wasn’t a host, she was a mother.

  Fiona screamed until she passed out.

  ###

  Part 7: Matriarch

  Chapter 1

  Fiona’s nostrils flared as her breath rushed through them. Her teeth were clenched, fighting past the pain that she couldn’t find a way to get used to. Every time it was the same, the tearing and the agony of childbirth. Not her children, they were his. During a particularly hateful moment she’d decided to name him Adam, for he was the father of a new species.

  She wasn’t Eve. When she’d enlisted in the Terran Coalition of Worlds Marine Corps she’d been rendered medically infertile. Every woman underwent the treatment, it was part of the enlistment process. When their active duty service ended the procedure was reversed. Welcome back periods, PMS, and the chance to have babies. Fiona was officially MIA, her genetic ability to reproduce had never been turned back on. Vitalis didn’t care. When Adam had taken her the very first time something had awakened inside her body. Something she hadn’t even been aware of. Now she was the Vitalian equivalent of the virgin mother.

  Adam wasn’t human. Not entirely. He was an evolutionary nightmare. A species that possessed both animal and insect genetic material had destroyed a human research settlement on Vitalis. They walked on four legs and looked like a giant beetle covered in hair. Their name, spitter, came from the toxin laden saliva they could project over a dozen feet that paralyzed within minutes.

  An unfertilized spitter egg had been implanted in a human host. The egg took the DNA from the host to create the fertilization, begetting a combination of Vitalian nightmare and human. The only problem was the new breed couldn’t reproduce. Every infected human host had been a man and thus the resulting offspring had been male.

  The second lump of squirming flesh slid free onto the floor of the cave. It was always two, for some reason. This was her third birthing and every time it was fraternal twins. The newborns looked human at first glance, in a swarthy and ugly way. Their teeth were already grown in and they had thick bristly hair that grew all over their bodies. She stared at the mewling newborn as it thrashed on the ground and eventually righted itself. It was a female, making to total four males and two females she’d given birth to. She knew she should hate it; to squash it and destroy it. But she couldn’t. Her exhaustion was overwhelmed by a need to nurse and protect the newborns.

  Adam reached down and pulled the bastard child away. Fiona was too weak to struggle. Behind her captor the other four children were gathered. The two eldest were nearly fully grown even though they were only two months old. A male and a female, the female’s abdomen was swollen as she neared the end of her month long gestation period. The next two looked like pre-pubescent teens after only a single month of age. They were both male and the most troublesome.

  Unlike their father, the monsters had faces that were almost human, if not quite proportional. They lacked the mandibles Adam and the other hybrids possessed, but still had vicious fingernails that doubled as claws. Her offspring possessed five fingers and toes and, anatomically, were fully humanoid. The eldest stood closer to seven feet tall than six feet, the only other glaring difference between them and a full human.

  “Rest,” Adam croaked at her. “Eat.”

  Fiona had strength enough to flip him off. The birthing had exhausted her. One of the firstborn shuffled forward with the remains of a lizard they’d captured while hunting. It pulled off strips of raw meat and fed them to her. Blood ran down her face as she chewed on the spicy meat. She’d tried refusing to eat in the past; it didn’t go well for her. She had three or four days after giving birth before Adam would return to impregnate her again. That was the only time she had real control of her body. Otherwise her body demanded sustenance, no doubt because of the rapid development of the fetuses.

  The human settlers on Vitalis believed the planet offered incredible benefits to the human body. Remarkable recovery from injuries, increased strength and endurance, and even immunity to viruses and diseases. Fiona had discovered the dark side of the blessing. In the right situations Vitalian gifts could serve as curses more cruel than anything humanity had ever imagined.

  After she ate she let her head fall back to the floor. Her arms and legs were tied with vines, preventing escape. Adam took his new children out, leaving her. The others followed, though they all stopped by before they left and touched her in a reverent fashion. She was their mother. Their queen. The one who’d given them life. Fiona fought back the bitter laugh and waited, battling the darkness that threatened to take her.

  After she judged enough time had passed, nearly half an hour, she worked her right hand free of the vines that encircled it. Adam hadn’t bothered changing them since he’d first captured her. They’d grown brittle and withered, giving her the room she needed to wiggle herself free. She’d been waiting for her chance and now, at last, she had it.

  Using her free hand she worked the other vines loose enough to allow her to escape. Once free she stretched her body and rubbed her tortured and unused muscles. Her back and butt had sores from lying on the ground for so long. She grimaced at the leftover soreness in her groin. It would pass, she knew, but even with the miraculous rate of rejuvenation living on Vitalis gave her she’d be weak for at least a few hours.

  She stared deeper into the cave. She wasn’t sure but she’d thought many times over the past three months that she’d seen a faint glow coming deeper from the passage. She wanted to check it out even now, but she knew time was not her ally. She turned away and headed up the passage to the mouth of the cave.

  The bright star field in the night sky lit up the landscape. She looked around, seeing the region for the first time. When Adam had brought her to the cave she’d been unconscious from the venom of his bite. He’d continued biting her until she’d built up a resistance to it, but that was after she’d given birth to the first of his children. She shuddered at the memory, then refocused on the scenery before her.

  The cave was high in the side of a mountain. A path led down to a small valley below. It was the only way out, high to either side cliffs rose to mountains above. Fiona peered at the sky again. She knew the sun had only recently set and that she was on the northeastern edge of whatever mountain chain she’d been taken too. A swamp lay to the east until it rose into hills and then mountains to the northwest. Greater details were impossible to make out in the starlight.

  She didn’t recognize the landscape, but from what she remembered, Treetown had to be to the north. Except the north looked nothing like the jungle where her friends were hidden. Even the jungle to the east was wrong.

  She started down, her body aching as she asked it to do things it hadn’t done in months. She’d been the second or third most dangerous person on Vitalis before she’d been captured. She could be that person again, she just needed time to heal. She shuddered again and fel
t a twinge in her belly. She needed time to forget as well.

  On the valley floor she moved through the trees favoring speed more than stealth. She had no idea where her new family had gone. She hesitated, briefly wondering if Adam would be able to provide for his newest sons. She shook her head. They were abominations. Products of violence and rape. She shouldn’t want any part of them! She started again. If she could bear children she could have her own, human, children now. That would fill the empty pit she felt in her belly.

  She pulled up short when she saw Adam’s silhouette standing ahead of her in the darkness. She couldn’t tell if he was facing towards or away from her. A glance around caused Fiona to gasp. Other hybrids stood in the trees. They were facing her. Watching her. She counted seven of them, all hybrids and not the creatures she’d given birth to.

  How could there be seven? Only one had survived, unless Kira had failed to find and defeat the one she’d tracked. Or had there been more infected hosts they hadn’t found? Another thought sent caused her stomach to cramp and a cold sweat to break on her brow. Had some, or all, of the humans at Treetown been captured?

  She turned around slowly, seeing the seventh hybrid walking up to her. That would be Adam. He stopped before her and waited. “Fuck you,” Fiona spat at him.

  He didn’t move. “Come,” he said.

  Fiona glanced around. “Yeah, I can’t wait to be tied up in a cave and raped once a month so I can spit out more of your ugly fucking kids!”

  Too far away to be an immediate threat, he reached out gestured with his hand. “Come.”

  The other spitter hybrids moved in closer, drawing the circle tight around her. Her children were nowhere to be seen, only the same nightmare fuckers that were just like Adam. She turned back to him, the flame of hope dying in her chest. “What are you going to do? Did you kill my friends? You’re breeding an army, aren’t you? You’re going to wipe out my people and rule this planet. You son of a bitch. No way I’m going to allow that. No way!”

  “Come.”

  “Stop fucking saying that!” Fiona yelled at him. She stomped towards him and smacked his hand out of her way then punched the thick shell over his chest. Adam backed up a step, then took another blow from her that failed to stagger him as much as it hurt her hand.

  “Come….mother.”

  She’d ranted at him whenever she’d seen him and he’d listened. His ability to speak was mangled, but he’d been learning. She suspected his vocabulary was larger than he let on. It made her sick to think of it, but the respect showed to her by her offspring reminded her of how virtually every species on the planet was matriarchal. The females of the species often called the shots, even if they were barely smart enough to keep themselves from shitting in the same water they drank from. “My people, did you hurt them?”

  It stared at her. “Humminz safe.”

  Humminz? As much as she wanted to scowl and punch him again, the relief at his words made her heart skip a beat. She relaxed, turning to see the circle of hybrids around them. If they hadn’t overran Treetown then they must have come from other hosts, Marines that had survived crashing into the planet long enough to be infected by the spitters. As much as she wanted to hate them she knew it wasn’t their fault. No more than it was a human baby’s fault if its mother died during childbirth.

  A noise drew her attention beyond the ring of hybrid flesh around her. She saw the pregnant girl holding one of the babies but it was being fussy. Something tugged at her, she knew why the baby was upset. A moment later she realized her body was reacting to it, wetness ran down her breast and dripped onto her belly.

  Fiona took a deep breath and let it out, shuddering slightly as she did so. She knew what she had to do. “You want me to cooperate? You leave me free. You show me some fucking respect! You let me call the shots. I’m smarter than you and I’m capable of a lot more. You won’t lay a hand on any humans without my permission either.”

  “Children?”

  She blinked. He understood her. What Adam was asking her made her close her eyes. She didn’t want any more fucking mutant kids. She felt drawn to the ones she had, but more of them? No. She shook her head. “Not a fucking chance! You’ve got six of them, two are girls and one of them is about to give birth. They’ll keep breeding and you’ll have your army.” Fiona stopped, her eyes narrowing. “No, I’ll have my army. You’ll lead it, but you’ll do what I tell you.”

  Adam reached out to her, not to grab her or take her, but with the same type of soft gesture her offspring had used to show respect for her. Fiona shook her head and stepped back from him. “Don’t fucking touch me! You kneel and call me your Queen.”

  Fiona heard faint scuffles of movement, drawing her attention. She turned around slowly, eventually coming back to face Adam. Every one of them was kneeling on both knees and staring at her. Tears ran unchecked down her cheeks.

  Chapter 2

  “These are amazing,” Eric muttered, running his hand gently across the large crystal. It was longer than he was tall and as thick as his midsection. It had taken Tarn and Barry both to bring it back from the cave Kira’d found.

  “I’ll show you amazing,” Kira said, breathing into his ear.

  “Must have been a lot of work, you seem hotter than usual.”

  Kira nipped his ear and pulled away, grinning. “Still no sign of Fiona or the hybrids.”

  “Weird how they just up and left us alone after trying so hard to capture somebody.”

  She nodded, then turned and rubbed the crystal, adding a fresh surge of pinkish light to it as it absorbed her heat and energy. She had nothing she wanted to add to the conversation. Fiona had been her friend. Her closest friend, aside from Eric. She’d trusted the woman and made her aware of practically everything she thought and knew. To have her disappear left her with a hole in her heart that she hadn’t figured out how to fill yet. She knew one of the new breed of spitters had gotten her, she just hadn’t been able to find any proof of it.

  “The little ones can channel energy that’s fed into them and they do some amazing things. This one’s too big; it needs a lot more juice than we can give it.”

  “What do they do?” Kira picked up her spear and tapped the crystal at the tip with her finger. It glowed faintly, matching the larger crystal. “Other than being really sharp?”

  Eric shook his head at the wicked grin on her face. “You scare me sometimes, you know?”

  “Have to keep you in line. I’ve seen the way some of the women look at you.”

  Eric snorted. “Like they’ve got a chance. I’m not the only one you scare, the difference is you scare me in a good way.”

  “Good, now hurry up before I give you a real reason to be afraid.”

  Eric sighed. “Jeremy and Klous have both been getting crazy over these things. Ling’s been trying to keep them informed but he’s in over his head with this kind of stuff. Electronics and running engines are where he’s best, though he’s proven good with math and construction.”

  “Why not Sasha?” Kira asked. Sasha was Klous’s partner. Before that she’d been a mechanic or a maintenance worker on his ship, Kira’d never really cared enough to remember.

  Eric smirked. “He’s afraid these things might have some sort of radiation or harmful energy. Doesn’t want her near them since she’s pregnant again.”

  Kira rolled her eyes. “He doesn’t need to scheme up some plan to take things over, those two are going to breed us out!”

  “Two kids in three years? Doesn’t seem that big of a threat,” Eric said after he finished laughing. “You just don’t like them.”

  Kira shrugged. It was true, she didn’t like Klous. She’d never hidden that fact from anyone either. It made Sasha cool towards her and strained relations with the rest of the crew from his ship, the Black Hole. Only Aran seemed to not care about it, but he was that way with just about everything and everyone.

  “I’m not really sure about the crystals. The effects vary based on the frequen
cy. I think if we could shape some of them we could use them to generate some powerful lasers. Small scale, not weapons.”

  Kira grunted to show she was listening even though he’d lost her interest. Lasers like that would be useful only for medicine or some utilitarian tasks, nothing she needed.

  “There’s plenty more, Queen of the Jungle,” Eric quipped.

  She furrowed her brows at him pretending to be annoyed at the honorific. It was an act and they both knew it. She loved the jungle and loved being such a force to reckon with. In her opinion the only thing higher on the food chain than her was Mother Vitalis herself, and she was just a concept that Kira talked about. “Such as?”

  “Fields that display properties of altering space-time.”

  “Altering what?”

  “Space-time. It’s four-dimensional. The basic tools we have that still work seem to show that there’s something amazing happening when the right frequency of energy is fed into the crystals. I can’t really be sure without a lot more testing and better equipment.”

  Kira sighed. “Hasn’t Klous weaseled the TC ship in orbit out of more junk to test with? At the rate he’s going they’ll be sending their hull and engines down for him soon.”

  Eric let a laugh slip. “The new comm. gear Ben got in the last supply drop has been working great. So great that he picked up more ships in system.”

  “What?” Kira stiffened, alarmed by the news. More ships meant more military. Another invasion would get a lot of people killed and those that weren’t would either end up as hosts for the spitters or more refugees forced to learn how to survive in Treetown.

  “They claim two more frigates and two transports, their plan is to establish an outpost. I don’t know more beyond that.”