The Galactic Sentinel: Ultimate Edition: 4 Books with 2000+ Pages of Highly Entertaining Sci-Fi Space Adventure

by Killian Carter

  Dying allies taking the risk of dying faster was rarely a good sign.

  6

  The Retrovirus

  The black-crested Zaqaran, dressed in green servant robes, silently led Taza onto the Omnion vat deck. He had only been to the Omnion quarters once before when Administrator Li had given the North Star crew a tour of the vessel. The lights were much dimmer than he remembered, or perhaps his mood had darkened since the last time.

  They reached the end of a walkway and the Zaqaran gestured to the control panel next to the door. "You’ve been granted temporary clearance, sir. If you will wait inside, Master Wu will be with you momentarily."

  Taza looked to the alien then back to the door. He had never been inside an Omnion domicile, and the thought made him feel a little uneasy.

  The Zaqaran smiled and bowed slightly before leaving him to it.

  He held his SIG against the control panel reader, and the door shifted as though suddenly turned to liquid. A hole in the middle melted open until it was big enough for Taza to pass through.

  The door squelched shut, and Taza’s eyes gradually adjusted to the sudden lack of light. A single red ceiling lamp barely lit the room, if a room was what one could call it. Taza had been expecting a standard crew cabin, but he had been in bigger wardrobes.

  A cold breeze brushed the side of his face and he fought a shiver.

  Fucking oversized freezer. He’d been in a foul mood ever since setting foot inside the Orinmore’s brig, and the cold was the cherry on top. Despite his TEK’s atmospheric controls, the chilled air seeped through his neck pads and gnawed at his bones. A deep exhale escaped as a heavy, white cloud, almost making him wish he was back on Loth.

  A metallic desk with two chairs, characteristic of Omnion furnishing, rested before him. The closest had already been pulled out as though indicating that was where he was meant to sit. Behind the desk, a cumbersome machine hung from the ceiling, taking up what little space remained.

  Taza bypassed his designated seat and approached the machine.

  "What the hell is that?" he muttered under his breath.

  Pipes and cables wound tightly around the contraption like some kind of sophisticated, slumbering engine. Two lights on the casing glowed red, giving the appearance of some ominous face. Taza searched for an inscription that might hint at the machine’s purpose but found nothing.

  A curved pipe, larger than the others, jutted from the machine’s left and wound around several large components. The pipe ended abruptly, its opening pointing at the ground like the engine exhaust outlet the old carbon-fueled vehicles he’d seen in history books.

  Looking at the floor, he realized the area below the device had slightly discolored.

  Must be leaking. They really have let their ship go to shit since before I left for Loth.

  He cautiously reached out and touched the machine. His SIG displayed temperatures close to freezing, and the metal vibrated with a subtle hum under his glove. It explained the cold room. A bit over-the-top for an air conditioning unit.

  The machine suddenly rumbled, and he knocked into the table behind. He reflexively went for his blaster, forgetting he’d left his weapons with deck security. He activated his helmet; glad they’d let him keep his TEK equipped.

  The red lights turned orange and flashed wildly. A sharp hiss joined the rumble, and the floor under his boots pulsed with tremors.

  Taza looked to the door in panic, wishing Wu would hurry the hell up.

  The lights turned green and the tremors quickly faded to nothing, filling the room with a silence somehow more alarming than the raucous. Taza fought another shiver, telling himself it was only the cold.

  Glancing at the door again, part of him wondered if he hadn’t been caught up in some elaborate conspiracy. Given his lack of progress on the investigation, perhaps he’d exhausted his usefulness to the Omnion, and they were ready to dispose of him. They went to great lengths to guard their secrets. Maybe they figured he knew too much. He’d always felt unsure about the species…ever since he met Wu close to a decade before. He could never quite put his finger on it…

  Movement near the machine caught his attention, and a thick rope of pale paste squeezed from the exhaust.

  Taza took an unsure step back, his leg pushing against the table, his eyes trained on the growing mound of matter. The substance eventually stopped pouring from the pipe, and the green lights turned red again.

  He wondered whether the machine was a malfunctioning food dispenser when tiny tendrils extended from the mound.

  He kicked back, almost knocking the metal table over.

  Didn’t Grimshaw say the things that attacked him had tentacles? I should have known better than to trust these people.

  Cursing himself for handing his gun and knife over so willingly, he looked around for anything he might use as a weapon and settled for a flimsy chair.

  He held the fabricated metal like a shield as the mass surged. The tendrils shifted and merged, coiling together to form a thick shaft that reached into the air like an arm. The thick paste convulsed and expanded as a ball formed at the end of the shaft. Five tendrils protruded from the ball and it flattened into a hand. The digits opened and closed until they found the end of the pipe. They clutched the machine component tightly and pulled. Knotted shapes emerged from the mound and Taza realized he was watching a head and shoulders forming as though some invisible hand sculpted a mound of clay.

  Taza remained transfixed as a crude face took shape—a face he recognized. He lowered the chair as Wu coalesced, gradually forming a complete humanoid body.

  The Omnion’s eyes remained closed as his uniform and skin developed textures. The face grew more solid, more real, but it seemed different. Wu’s flesh was paler than Taza remembered, and every now and then his skin moved like stones or bones rolled beneath the surface. Before leaving for Loth, the Omnion looked fine. The disease had spread as fast as Grimshaw and the others had claimed.

  Wu’s eyes finally snapped open and he gasped for air, his chest and shoulders heaving.

  Taza tried not to gasp in turn.

  A sickly yellow clouded the Omnion’s eyes, dulling their usual sharpness.

  "Please excuse the…entrance," Wu said between sharp breaths. "And the poor lighting. The more the retrovirus progresses…the longer I must spend in the vats with my people. We slow its progress when we’re joined together. I hope you did not find my entrance too…disturbing." Wu eyed Taza’s white knuckles as he clutched the chair.

  Taza deactivated his helmet. "It caught me…off guard. A little warning would have been nice. I didn’t realize you spend time in your vats as…"

  "Glop?" Wu chuckled weakly, holding his chest in pain. "It isn’t our natural state as such. It is a form we occasionally take to aid recovery. We Omnion join in our vats and collectively thrive, replacing damaged cells with new sub-organic materials. Other species might view it as spending time in sickbay. The disease has spread quickly, as you can see, causing us to spend most of our time in recovery."

  "Are you okay?" Taza tried not to sound as worried as he felt, but Wu looked like he could hardly stand.

  Taza set the chair before Wu, offering for him to sit.

  The Omnion nodded and sank into a sitting position. He winced as a knot rolled under his eye. "The retrovirus has progressed faster than we anticipated. Since your return, you’ve likely noticed the lack of Omnion presence. Without spending so long as a collective mass, I fear we would have already perished. Even as things stand, some of us are close to death."

  "Yet you risk taking your solid form to speak with me?"

  "The longer I hold this form, as poor as it might be, the stronger the disease’s hold on me," Wu said, his words becoming a little more coherent. "Despite our best efforts, we still don’t understand the virus or its behavior. All we know for sure is that it speeds up the natural process of degeneration the longer we spend disconnected from the collective. You could think of it as aging. We Omnio
n tend to live longer than most species, but the retrovirus has accelerated our aging process. Not to bore you with omnion physiology."

  "Isn’t that why you needed the black powder on the Brink. Your body acted strange when you spent too long away from your people."

  "Well remembered, Archagent Arkona," Wu smiled as he nodded. "Those were better times. The effects are similar. We have experimented with andamonium, using it as a temporary salve. Initially, increasing the dosage slowed the virus, but at this point it has little effect, and our supply of andamonium has run low."

  "There must be a way for us to communicate without you leaving your vat."

  "Of course." Wu winced again as he drew a deep breath. "But the collective wanted you to witness the severity of the situation." His face shifted and he looked frightened all of a sudden, as though the disease temporarily made him unable to conceal the face he hid below his usual stony expression. Suddenly, his features grew solid once again. "We don’t have long, Taza. What news do you bring of the investigation?"

  "I ran into a dead end on Loth, but I might have a new lead since questioning the Quamat. He mentioned being inside a giant dome when he first arrived inside the Shroud."

  That got Wu’s attention but he got distracted by the pitted burns on Taza’s shoulder pad. "I heard about the incident in the interrogation room."

  "Why the hell weren’t his glands neutralized?" It was hard not to be angry at the Omnion even in his current state.

  Wu squinted the way he always did when displeased with Taza’s tone. "We gave Tarrig a hormone to shrink his acid glands. It should have rendered them useless, but it appears his body’s ability to regenerate overcame the treatment. Our medical personnel are still investigating the matter."

  "That doesn’t matter now," Taza said, growing impatient. "The large dome with the star inside that Tarrig mentioned. Do you know what those could be? I didn’t see anything like that on Loth."

  "It would seem that fate does have a sense of humor," the Omnion said as though drunk.

  Taza grew tired of the word games. "Fate? You mean the oracle-drive? What has that got to do with Tarrig? Can you use it to locate his accomplices?"

  "We've already been through this before, Taza," Wu said, his eyes squinting as he too grew irritated. "Only a select few can operate the oracle-drive, and even if we were able, it would take a great deal of stress. It doesn’t see the future. It calculates—"

  "Save me the lecture," Taza said, waving his hand dismissively. "I know all that."

  "Of course. I merely wish to note how things have become complicated with the discovery of a second oracle-drive."

  Taza recalled being shown the immense crystalline machine in the bowels of the Orinmore. "There are more than one of those things?"

  "Our studies have revealed that the Ancients built three. We had our suspicions, but one of our field agents has recently confirmed that Chimera possess one."

  "That makes things interesting, I’m sure."

  "It is both fortunate and unfortunate in equal measures."

  "Where’s the third?"

  "We’ve spent millennia searching for the others. The Ancients built their machines to last, but they still require maintenance. We assumed they had been destroyed or lost to time. With the rediscovery of a second, who knows where the third might be?"

  "Can’t you tell using the one you already have?" He knew the Omnion would think it a stupid question, but they had an annoying habit of assuming everyone knew what they were talking about.

  Wu’s left cheek bulged, and he lifted a hand to his face as if to hold it together. "Our engineers have tried. The oracle-drives produce dissonant sub-space frequencies. Those signals cancel each other out, essentially cloaking one drive from another. It is the same reason we cannot calculate probabilities on board the Orinmore. The oracle measures countless possible outcomes with an incredibly low margin of error. The closer one measures to the oracle itself, however, the more obscured the results become. Think of it as an eye that can see everything but has never seen itself and can never see other eyes like it. We call it the privy paradox. When two eyes exist in close enough proximity, the effects of the privy paradox dramatically increase. We aren’t certain, but we think it might even expand beyond the space and time occupied by both machines. Hence, our inability to calculate what Chimera are planning with acceptable accuracy. The existence of more than one oracle-drive multiplies possibility calculations and increases the margin of error to the point where both drives become redundant."

  "Then what’s the point in having an oracle-drive?"

  "If we deactivate our oracle-drive, Chimera would enjoy a significant advantage. Since we both possess an oracle, it levels the playing field."

  "You’ve been relying more on your field agents lately?" Taza asked, knowing how the Omnion prided themselves on being one of the better informed species.

  Wu smiled and gestured at Taza. "We are still growing accustomed to relying on more…traditional methods."

  "It makes sense that Chimera have been using spies…despite having an oracle-drive."

  "It is fortunate that Grimshaw discovered the spy on board the Orinmore when he did or we would no doubt have greater problems."

  Taza ran his hand through his hair. "It’s a pity we didn’t discover swigger sooner. Now I understand why Zora couldn’t trust us on the Sentinel. Unless that was included in her oracle calculations."

  "She didn’t receive any such information from us," Wu said, almost defensively. "We detected the first major spike in the sub-space frequency a little over a Terran year ago. That was likely when Chimera activated their oracle-drive. Ever since then, calculations have been patchy at best. We worked with archived data from before that point. The longer we went without more recent data, the less accurate our calculations became. Things worsened before Chimera’s attack on the Sentinel. We believe that was when they brought their oracle-drive into Sentinel Space."

  "Then how did Zora know what was going on?"

  Wu shrugged. "She had access to some data. But I think she intuitively knew that someone on your team was a mole. She didn’t have the time or resources to confirm. Instead, she made preparations to offset a worst case scenario."

  "Just as well, or we’d all have been executed long ago. A lot of things make sense now, looking back on it…" Taza’s words drifted off as he thought about the times he got to spend with Zora before Chimera’s attack.

  "You still resent Zora’s severing ties with you?"

  The pointed question jolted Taza from his daydream. He drew a deep breath and sighed. "Resent is a strong word. Zora didn’t make any promises. I guess I hoped for more…but we had a good run, so I can’t complain."

  "Zora is a…complex woman. She’s had an independent streak since the day we enlisted her. If it makes you feel any better, she left the Orinmore shortly after you did without so much as an explanation to her superiors. I had hoped she would be a little less autonomous by now, but I guess her self-sufficiency is what makes her so good at what she does."

  The Omnion also having to put up with Zora’s unpredictable nature made Taza smirk. He found some pleasure in knowing that she hadn’t given him the cold shoulder because she had been ordered to do so. "Her disappearance does make me wonder. She probably has information we don’t. Again…"

  "Perhaps she knew a spy had made his way onto the Orinmore and decided to prepare for certain eventualities." Wu broke eye-contact for less than a second, but Taza noticed.

  "You don’t know where she is, do you?"

  "We assigned her to Ushtar, but we lost contact with her after you left for Loth. Going dark means she may have found something important. It wouldn’t be the first time she cut communications. However, it is just as likely that she’s in trouble…which is the real reason the Omnion collective would like you to stay while the North Star leaves. We still need to figure out how the Quamat got into the Shroud. Even if Grimshaw secures a cure before we perish, Chimera co
uld send others."

  "Or they could attack outright."

  "We do not think so. Whatever means they are using, we believe that Chimera are only able to bring a few people into the Shroud at a time. If they would have been able to attack by force, they wouldn’t have needed the virus."

  "It could be a tactic to weaken the Orinmore before such an attack."

  "The Zaqaran are capable of defending the Orinmore without us. Either way, the Quamat and whatever Zora stumbled upon are related.

  "What makes you so sure?"

  A shape moved under Wu’s shirt, and the Omnion recoiled as his body adjusted. His shoulder sagged. "You said the prisoner mentioned a dome."

  "Yes. He described it as large and gray with a star hanging from the ceiling, but Chimera blind-folded him before he could see more."

  "Tarrig describes a very specific facility on Ushtar…the very one we assigned Zora to in fact. She confirmed her arrival right before going dark."

  "That’s one hell of a coincidence."

  "Ushtar supports many domed habitats, but the primary andamonium processing plant is the only one with a fusion reactor hanging from the ceiling." Wu winced but recovered quickly. "The Ushtarans mine most of the substance for us. Lately, however, production stopped." Wu panted as though struggling to breathe.

  Taza gave Wu a moment to compose himself. "What happened?"

  "The Ushtarans use the Chan for labor. They’ve been threatening a revolt for some time now. We didn’t take it seriously at first. They’ve made similar empty threats in the past. This time, however, Ushtaran officials started showing up dead. This was why we sent Zora."

  "Great. Chimera. The retrovirus. And now a rebellion."

  "Though we lost contact with Zora, other contacts reported that things had calmed down. At least until three days ago. Zaqaran field agent Bulstrad and a senior Ushtaran politician, Chancellor Namoro, were found dead at the andamonium processing plant. The incident has caused tension between the Ushtarans and Chan to rise again. One group blames the other, and we fear that things will come to a head. The last we heard, the Ushtaran authorities were dealing with the matter, but we’ve since lost communications. The disturbances caused by Ushtar’s atmospheric storms can last for weeks, but we can’t afford to wait that long."