He nodded. "I had to make adjustments to the pack for it to work with your angel-class suit."
"I don’t know if I can accept this, Narith. After all the work you’ve done. It’s…too much."
"It is valuable, true. However, it won’t be of any use to me in here, and I won’t be leaving any time soon. Perhaps you could use it in the field when you feel you are able. I would appreciate it if you could share your findings."
Clio clipped the heavy device onto her own belt. "It’ll last longer than the battery the Aegi Order provided?"
Narith tipped his head. "It will also provide a more stable power flow, increasing your energy shield and kinetic barrier without overloading your hardware. It will improve your armor’s anti-shock properties…and more. I will send you the full specifications."
"Maybe send a summary too." She didn’t mind digging through lines of code, but she didn’t want to disassemble complicated engineering schematics to understand a simple battery pack.
"Of course." Narith’s smile told her that he knew exactly what she meant. "If I truly do not see you again before you leave, I wish you a safe return to the Orinmore."
She appreciated the Zaqaran’s confidence.
She tapped the black case on her hip. "I’ll take this thing for a spin and let you know how it performed when I get back."
He joined his fingers and bowed slightly, as was custom for a Zaqaran when bidding another farewell. "May good fortune follow in your wake."
"And the same to you." Clio returned the gesture.
Narith walked back in the direction he’d come. After several steps, he spun on his heel. "I will miss our discussions too."
He joined his fingers and bowed once more before leaving.
Clio detached the battery from her belt, turning it in her hands.
"I think he likes you," Booster said with a wicked grin.
She shoved his shoulder and he hopped along the rail. "He wants me to test his battery."
"That’s one way of putting it."
Clio swiped for Booster again, but he jumped over her arm, giggling.
Booster’s ears pricked as another set of boots rang down the corridor.
Clio turned as Swigger appeared on the platform.
”Hey, guys," he said with a wave. "Sorry I’m late." He rubbed his eyes.
"Another bad night?"
"Barely slept a wink."
"You’ve barely slept since we arrived," Clio said, exasperated. "You should really see Doctor Roshi."
"Like I said, it’s this damn Omnion atmosphere. Nothing the doctor can do about that."
Booster skipped along the rail and stopped by Swigger and hummed as the marksman scratched behind his ears.
Clio joined them, her hand snapping out and tugging on the end of Swigger’s beard before he could react.
"I already told you. I’m not cutting it off."
She chuckled. "Actually, it’s growing on me. I might even learn to like it."
His continued weight-loss, however, worried her. His cheek bones were more pronounced each time she saw him and his eyes more sunken. His uniform hung loose on his shoulders and he had lost some of his jovial energy. Clio decided not to pursue the subject this time. She wasn’t in the mood for a fight. Her eyes darted to engineering and back. She couldn’t blame him. The events of the past year had taxed everyone, and to top it all off, they had to adjust to such an alien environment.
She tried to cover her concern with a smile as she leaned in for a kiss.
He pulled away, a deep furrow cut across his brow.
Clio saw Booster slinking into the shadows out of the corner of her eye.
"Is everything okay?"
"I’d prefer it if we took things…slower this time," he said without looking her in the eyes.
"You weren’t asking me to go slower the other night," she said, trying to lighten the mood.
Swigger grinned, a glimmer of his old self briefly shining through before being swallowed by another darkened expression. "I’ve been thinking about us a lot over the last few days. Given that we might be leaving soon, it’s best we remain focused."
"Why the sudden change?" She tried to take his hand.
Swigger pulled away. "It’s not as if we’d committed to anything anyway. Sure, we’ve been seeing each other a lot lately. But that just kind of happened. We should have talked—"
"Just kind of happened?" Clio spat. "What the hell are you talking about, Swigger? I’m done playing these games. I thought we were making it work."
"We were. But the timing is…"
"Not right?" She said, trying her best not to lose it altogether. "You could at least come up with a new excuse."
"Look," he said, lowering his voice. "Ever since Colony 115, I’ve barely had time to think. Now that we’re finally in the Shroud and things are quiet…I’ve been able to mull things over. I think we should—"
"Stop seeing each other?"
"No…Well yes," he stuttered. "I mean until after the next mission."
Clio took a deep breath, pressing back the rage.
"I understand," she said, trying not to sound hurt. The weight of the past year suddenly pressed down on her shoulders. She stepped closer and pulled on his beard so that he was forced to look her in the eyes. "Swigger. This might sound like a strange question, but have I changed?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean since meeting me on Colony 115. Am I a different person?"
He looked over her shoulder toward the engine room as if lost in thought. "We’ve been through a lot in such a short time, Clio." He shifted his feet and locked eyes with her again. "That kind of shit changes people. But as far as I’m concerned, you’re the same cocky girl I met on 115. I know it’s a dick move, but I need time to figure things out."
For the first time in months, Swigger smiled ear to ear.
Clio couldn’t help but smile in return, the tension in her shoulders easing a little. "Thanks, Swigger. I’m glad we talked."
"Ensign Evans," Administrator Li’s voice cut across the platform’s comms. "Please report to Lab Seventeen."
Clio lifted her SIG in answer. "I’m on my way."
Swigger raised his eyebrows again. "I thought they stopped seeing you weeks ago?"
Clio shrugged and looked at him apologetically. "Maybe they’ve found information worth reporting."
"Don’t you get tired of all the poking and prodding?"
"It isn’t all that bad. I knew Doctor Roshi on the Sentinel. He runs most of the scans. Sometimes Anderson will take a blood sample. It takes no more than fifteen minutes. Every now and then an Omnion will watch, though one of those hasn’t visited in a long time. I’ll continue letting them run tests as long as it will help them find out what’s wrong with me."
"Are they any closer to figuring out what happened to you on 115?"
"Doctor Roshi thinks they’ve isolated a gene related to it, but other than that, I know nothing."
Swigger nodded. "You want me to walk you up to the labs?"
Clio shook her head. She needed some space to let his change-of-heart sink in, but she was hardly going to tell him as much. "It’s fine. I’ve got Booster with me, then I’ve got a full day of training on the North Star’s new flight configuration."
"How are the upgrades?"
"Pretty impressive, but simulations can only teach you so much. We’ll know more when we take her outside." She looked to Booster. "We better go before Administrator Li gets her knickers in a twist. You know how the Zaqarans can be."
"I would swear they were related to the Yalore if they didn’t look so different."
Clio giggled awkwardly. "We better head to the labs, Booster. The Zaqarans up there are particularly grumpy."
Booster bounded across the platform and stood by her side. "The Zaqarans are particularly grumpy no matter where they are," Booster chirped.
She couldn’t argue with that. It had taken Clio some time to get used to his clearer speech, but every now and then he w
ould catch her off guard with a longer word than usual.
Swigger looked at them for a moment. "Okay, I guess I better head then."
"Yeah."
"See you around."
He turned and exited through the left corridor.
Clio sighed. "Well, I didn’t expect that."
Booster scrambled up her side and perched on her shoulder. "We don’t need Swigger."
"I guess we don’t," she lied to herself. "We better get to the lab before Li sends a search party for us again."
She entered the corridor and took a right, heading toward the Orinmore’s primary tube transport system.
The mini SIG on Booster’s wrist hummed. "Monkey Man wants to see me," he said, checking his messages.
"You told me Alvar is building a surprise," she said, eager to keep him a little longer. "How’s that going?"
"It’s good," he said, suddenly excited. "Almost finished."
"Still not going to tell me what it is?"
"That’s how surprises work."
"How about your lab results? Have you guys been able to figure out what happened to you before we met?"
Booster shook his head. "The Omnion are still too sick to help. In the meantime, Doctor Roshi runs tests. Makes sure it doesn’t get worse."
She reached up and scratched him behind the ears. "We’ll fix this Omnion sickness soon, and then they’ll fix the both of us." She wasn’t sure whether to believe her own words. She couldn’t imagine how the crew of the North Star could cure a virus so complex the Omnion couldn’t tackle it themselves. "It was good to see you outside the usual routine, Booster. Even if it wasn’t for very long."
"It was very good."
"We’ll have to make sure we don’t leave it so long next time."
He nodded before bounding off in the general direction of Alvar’s workshop.
Two broad doors hissed apart, admitting Clio to the Lab Seventeen waiting area. Decorated cold white with light gray accents, the lab felt even more sterile than the rest of the Orinmore. A broad reception desk occupied a third of the room, and a dozen empty chairs took up what space remained. The Omnion overseeing the labs in particular went to great lengths to keep the interior simple and clean-cut.
Clio nodded to Lab Seventeen’s receptionist.
He snorted with derision. "You’re late again, Evans."
"You’ve been working on your manners, Vayon," she said with mock surprise. She hurried to the usual treatment room before the receptionist could react.
"Room two," he called after her, even though she’d already reached the door.
She muttered curses under her breath as she entered the white-walled treatment room. An array of colorful control panels and medical equipment lent the room a touch of character. A small desk stood to the left and a bed rested in the right corner.
Doctor Roshi leaned over a low terminal at the far end of the room while a Zaqaran assisted Andrews at the full body medical scanner.
"Take a seat," Doctor Roshi said, briefly glancing over his shoulder. "I’ll be with you in a second."
Clio took her usual place before the doctor’s desk.
The Shanti joined her, sitting opposite with a compad in his hand, a crease cut across his forehead. "Are you okay, Evans? You look a little pale? Have you been spending enough time on the sun deck?"
"Nothing to worry about. I’m fine, Doctor."
"Have you been getting enough sleep?"
Clio twiddled her thumbs. "To be honest, I haven’t been sleeping well lately."
"The nightmares still bothering you?"
"The therapy has helped…" She paused. "They’ve gotten worse lately. Probably because of all this talk about leaving the Orinmore. My mind has a funny way of dealing with change."
"Would you like me to prescribe medication to help you rest?"
Clio stifled a yawn. "I’d normally turn down that kind of medicine. Hate how drowsy it makes me. But I think I’ll make an exception this time."
Roshi nodded and entered a command on his cumbersome medical-grade SIG.
A fist-sized metal sphere—not unlike Faye Laya’s cameras—floated towards them.
Roshi plucked it from the air and pulled the medicine from the bot before handing it to Clio. "Take one of these straight before you go to sleep. You’ll only feel groggy and cloudy the first morning after. Your body should adapt to the side-effects by day two."
"Thank you, Doctor."
"You’re welcome, my friend. You should go relax when we’re done here…try to get some rest. If Straiya were here, she would tell you to…"
Clio reached across the desk and put her hand on his. "I only heard yesterday. But they haven’t found a…body."
"Of course not." Roshi slowly withdrew his hand, fixing his already pristine collar. "You don’t find a body when a ship disintegrates in the atmosphere like that."
"Any word on who did it?"
Roshi shook his head. "Chimera. The Galactic Council. One of the Shanti saratribes. Who knows?"
"One day we’ll find out and make them pay."
"I don’t know if I like that idea. There’s already enough killing in the galaxy without us adding to the body count."
"Better our enemy’s bodies than our own."
Roshi’s eye lit up. "That sounds like something Straiya would say."
"She was a right pain in the ass, but she was starting to grow on me," Clio said with a half smirk, trying to lighten the tone.
Roshi smiled as he shrugged. "She was a pain in all our asses, but she made sure we got the job done. These things happen. When you play the kind of game Alavon Straiya played, you risk losing your life and more."
"You two were close, weren’t you?"
Roshi cocked a bushy eyebrow. "Not that kind of close. But I worked for her family for over thirty years. She was like a sister to me."
"You’ve lost so much, Roshi. The Sentinel. The Aegi Order. And now Straiya. And that’s before we get to the war your people are fighting."
"Straiya…well, we can’t do anything about that. But we will take the Sentinel back in time. As for the Aegi Order, it may have been broken, but it is far from lost. I’ve sent messages to those who still live. Hopefully, we can assemble some of the Aegi once we’re out of this mess…and start building again. But that’s enough of that. We have work to do."
"You want me in the scanner?"
"Not today. We’d like to inject an MN-17 tracer first if that’s okay.“
"Whatever it takes, Doc." Clio unfolded her uniform sleeve, exposing her SIG’s injection port.
He injected a sterilizing solution. "Have you had any events lately?"
"None…I get the feeling sometimes, deep down in my gut, but it still hasn’t gone full-scale like it did on Colony 115. Even that one time I tapped into it on the Sentinel was more of a blip."
"It’s best we keep checking, to be on the safe side."
"Any update on what causes these…events?"
"Your endocrine system is more active than is considered normal for Terrans, and we picked up unusual Alpha wave activity on the last scan. I’m afraid that’s all we’ve got so far, and I’m not even sure if they’re related, but that’s what the tracer’s for." He sounded troubled.
Clio smiled. "Better than nothing, I guess."
"We’ve been searching the Omnion archives," Andrews said, joining them. "From what we’ve gathered, the Confederation Science Division formulated the original fury drug after deciphering an artifact discovered in the seas under Pluto. Possibly ancient tech. There’s no way of telling for sure with so little data. As archaic as the Omnion are, even they have little information on the Ancients. Wherever they went, they took almost every trace of their existence with them."
Doctor Roshi sighed. "It would help if we could get our hands on those CSD records, but even if the Omnion did allow open contact with the outside, I doubt Aegis Grimshaw’s contacts could get us that kind of classified information."
Andrews lea
ned closer to Clio and injected a faint yellow substance into her port. “The tracer’s nanites could stay in your system for a few months before breaking down and leaving through your liver. But you’ll not even notice they are there. It’ll take a day for them to activate, so we’ll run the next scan in two days."
"What time?"
"Around now will do," Andrews said, pushing the spent syringe into a trash receptacle.
Roshi gestured with his compad. "You’re sure you haven’t been showing any signs lately?"
"Positive. It used to happen when I lost my temper. But since Nakamura treated me with that serum on 115, I rarely feel it at all."
"You keep serum on you at all times?"
Clio tapped the med compartment on her utility belt. "What about Booster?"
They looked at her uncomfortably.
Roshi cleared his throat. "We’ve slowed the deterioration around the scar tissue on his brain significantly, but we haven’t been able to stop it…not yet."
"Despite improvements in his language, his cognitive function has worsened since our arrival," Andrews added. "If left untreated, his brain will eventually shut down."
Clio’s heart sank at the mere thought. "When we were prisoners together on the Sentinel, Alvar said he might know how to fix it with the right equipment. Hasn’t he been able to do anything?"
Andrews nodded. "Alvar was working with the Omnion medical staff to reverse the damage. They were close to scheduling an operation, but the spread of the retrovirus forced the medical Omnion back into their vats. We haven’t heard from them in weeks and Alvar doesn’t feel he can perform the operation alone. He believes he would only cause more damage…damage that would be completely irreversible."
Clio nodded, for it was all she could do. "Thank you for the update."
"Well, that’ll be all for today," Doctor Roshi said.
Evans stood and made for the door. "I better get to the hangar before Eline and Marilda start bitching about my tardiness again. You’re the only Shanti I know who doesn’t have a stick up his ass."
Andrews stifled a giggle.
"Don’t overdo it, Aegis Evans," Roshi warned.
Clio waved and exited the lab. As she navigated the Orinmore’s corridor network, her thoughts turned to Booster.
The Galactic Sentinel: Ultimate Edition: 4 Books with 2000+ Pages of Highly Entertaining Sci-Fi Space Adventure Page 71