by Naomi Lucas
“Yes, other Cyborgs, my doctors, men in the field. I usually worked alone, same with the others’ like me. We were designed as an afterthought,” he spat the word out. “A theory and a test, a corruption of DNA, honing the right mind to control two forms.”
“I don’t see you as a corruption,” she whispered into his neck.
“I’m a spider, Kat, you hate bugs.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“If you cut me open, test my blood, check my scans, you’ll find a myriad of spider genes attached to mine. I can even create my own poison.” Dommik waited for her response, waited for her body to stiffen next to his, he waited for the horror that people who didn’t know there were creations like him. The women soldiers on his ship tripping over themselves to run away from him, the men who felt like they had to target their commander with their guns, unsure for their lives. The first women he took to bed, knowing what he was, cried to him afterward because she had lost a bet. “I make people sick by just the thought of me.”
He felt her shrug and curl closer to him, Dommik couldn’t get closer to her if he tried.
“You don’t make me sick, you forced the sickness out of me, and demanded I move on. I’m trying.” He felt her hand move down to grip something on her thigh, only to stop and relax. “I can’t move on if I fear one bug for another. Will you show yourself to me someday? I’d like to see you. In the light, that is.”
“Someday,”
“I’d like that. Mia is going to be so mad when we deliver her the flower and you haven’t lost me.”
“Maybe. Get some sleep, tomorrow we’ll reach out destination but tonight I just want to hold you.” He didn’t want to hurt her, he wanted to keep her. His ears perked up at the soft sound of her breathing and his nostrils filled with their mutual scent. He felt perfection. Or the closest he had ever come to it in his long life.
Chapter Eighteen:
---
Dommik left Kat at midnight Earthian time and went back to the bridge, keeping her door and the lavatory open for her use. He was covered in her scent and he relished it, knowing he took a little piece of her with him when he left.
Bin-One, his constant companion was waiting for him when he arrived.
“Report.”
“The Trentian aircraft is still tailing us, Master, they have informed nearby ships not to interfere with your passage,” it responded.
“What about our destination?” Dommik sat at the helm, pulling up the coordinates.
“We will be within Xan’Mara’s atmosphere in the next hour. Shall I find us a port to land, Master?”
He looked out over the dark room, eying the ropes he had hanging throughout his make-shift web in every corner. It was varying, thick in some places while others were just knotted heaps and bundles. Matted hair with wet and dripping fibers that almost touched the ground. He found a length and tugged it into his hands, enjoying the burn as it chafed across his skin.
“No, I’ll find us a place. Thank you, Bin-One, you can go below.” It left without a farewell.
Dommik checked his transmissions, finding only several from Mia and the EPED hailing him for his status, and one from Gunner.
‘Arrived at Xan’Mara, day 22th of May, with an escort from Space Lord Markoss to retrieve one O'lia flower.’
It wouldn’t arrive before he was done with this mission. Messages were slow this far out in space. He expected they would be on their way home by the end of the day. He opened the security feed to see that Kat hadn’t moved from her quarters.
He opened Gunner’s message.
‘Stryker’s a real dumbass who's going to get himself fried. I need you to take my deliveries in, I’ll meet you at the spot.’
Dommik chose not to respond. He didn’t want Gunner to know his current coordinates. If Gunner entered Trentian airspace, the aliens have an allowance to take him in and take him out without a reason. He wasn’t about to get mixed up with political warfare. It was his least favorite kind.
The moon came into view and he scanned the surface for the pilgrims, finding several settlements throughout the muddy-grey landscape. The surface reminded him of stagnant puddles of water left behind by the sun’s rays to birth new bugs.
The flower, a native to the moon, was harvested and sold by the pilgrims as their main source of income. It was often used for medicinal purposes for the aliens, as well as having a vitality boost upon intake, a natural steroid that could increase energy and endurance, it was a symbol in bonding pairs to be taken before mating to prolong the act and guarantee that insemination had occurred.
It was an outdated ritual that had come back in recent years. A small hope to replenish the Trentian species after the war and the breeder’s disease.
Earth wanted it.
One flower. One is all you get.
Dommik was sure the Space Lord believed he couldn’t keep the flower alive to bring one back. But he was going to damn well try just to spite the bastard. Even so, it was hard to care about anything anymore, his mind had been lost since Argo and now his heart was bleeding out of him every time he thought about Kat.
And the child he put in her womb. His nanocells reconfiguring and bonding to her egg to create a human baby. Cyborgs can’t be born but the child he gave her would be superior to any human alive.
Except for the monstrous qualities his father had...the blood of bugs.
He only hoped that Kat would see it as she saw him. And someday forgive him.
Dommik looked down at his hands to find the rope tied tight into a ball. He threw it to his web, where it got caught in the strands. The ship screened the atmosphere and alerted him for landing. A flat plateau of land within a wild field of plants. He felt his ship adjust as he left the bridge.
He buckled up in light armor that was camouflaged and strengthened with his specific bio-suits nanoparticles. The knives he kept and his specialized darts tucked into the bands of his suit with one pistol for good measure.
Who knows what that flower could do. He found himself snickering as he entered the elevator, checking the metal parts of his body to ensure safe shifting. Nothing stuck.
He was good to go.
Dommik ran into Kat as the elevator opened. She softened under his gaze, greeting him with a yawn and stretch. Her tits perked as they pressed into the soft cloth of her shirt.
She eyed him back. “Time to pluck the flower?”
Dommik wanted to shift back into his beast and fuck her all over again. “I’ve already plucked it,” he growled, pulling her against him. “You should be holding onto something during landing.” The ship shuddered as he said it.
“Good thing I have you to keep me in line.” She leaned up and kissed the underside of his jaw.
More blood dripped from his heart.
“They know we’re here. Let’s get this over with.”
***
Kat leaned up on her toes and placed a kiss on Dommik’s cheek. They were on Xan’Mara and had passed the first test brought on by the Trentians. One flower, only one flower could be extracted because of her.
She should have stayed at Ghost. She didn’t know how they were going to get the plant back to Earth, alive. All she could think of to do was kiss him and continue kissing him. Hoping each kiss would make him forgive her faster, love her faster. She flinched.
“Be safe.”
“It’s a damned flower.”
“And it changed our lives.” He turned to face her, his eyes hard. “This isn’t Argo,” she whispered.
“You don’t even know. You should have stayed on Ghost.”
Kat sighed, exasperated. “I know. And if the flower dies, I’ll lose my job anyway, right?”
Dommik looked at her like he knew something. Something she didn’t. “You don’t even know.” He dropped down on his knees and lifted her shirt, his lips kissed her right below her belly button. She grabbed his hair for balance as his breath tickled her into a shuddering frenzy. He stood up with a twisted smile that s
he couldn’t help smile back at. “I’ll be back soon. It’s a failed mission if it dies. We only get one.”
He stepped away from her and entered the hull, she followed as he checked the edge of one of his knives. One gun strapped to his hip. Kat looked at the weapons at length and the weapon he was. She knew at some level that he would never hurt her, that in a way she may be the only person he would never hurt, that’s if she could believe the whispers he flooded into her ear the night before.
Kat shook herself, “Then steal some seeds. Did he say anything about the seeds?”
His steps echoed in her ears and she knew he was withdrawing into his metal shell. The hard exterior of his body solidified and his eyes darkened into the shadows they were. Dommik unraveled his humanity, leaving nothing but the Monster Hunter he was behind.
The hatch opened up, letting in a waft of earthy soil into the ship, pervading the once sanitized space. She gulped it down as if heaven itself was just through that door.
The Trentian ship landed with a plume just outside, killing the fresh smell with exhaust and fire. Kat tried to peer around Dommik but he shielded her sight. “If I’m not back in twenty-four hours, alert Mia and the EPED. Don’t open the hatch for anyone.” He stared at the other ship, his voice no longer human.
“I won’t.” Can I even open the hatch?
The door shut with him on the other side. And silence met her every breath. She looked up at the vents that groaned on above. The smell of everything outside her cage disappeared into the ceiling as if it had never been there to begin with.
One of the Bins approached her. “He left this for you, Katalina Jones.” The android handed her a wristlet.
“Thank you,” she said, putting it on. It didn’t help the feeling of suffocation.
Kat walked back to the elevator to see if it would open but to her annoyment, it did not. Checking the console room only made her heart race; the computer was gone, smashed and cleaned up by the androids. Before long she found herself pacing back and forth across the menagerie, counting every step and every second that passed.
The door to the roach room loomed in her periphery and every time she came close to it, her steps quickened. Every time she noticed it, fear clouded her mind. It was as if the room was alive and waiting for her and it watched her with hunger.
Kat could feel it watch her. She could also feel her promise cracking under the pressure of its gaze, reminding her of the sickness that killed her parents and the delusions she fed from it.
Until her feet faltered and she stood in front of it. The door peeled open, allowing her entry. What were the odds that the very thing I feared most was with me this whole time…
Kat stepped through the innocuous rectangular entryway and into the light where she was going to face her fears. Not for Dommik, but for herself.
Chapter Nineteen:
---
Dommik ignored the Piercer and crept to the high stalks that ran flush and far over the endless fields on either side of him. They were stiff and stubborn, the type of plant that made great padding for dens, burrows, and nests for birds but he didn’t see any immediate wildlife about him, he never did when he first landed on a planet. His ship would scare everything away.
The shadow of his spacecraft towered over him, blocking out the twin suns on the horizon. The colors of the day were moving fast, and the moon was small, he would encounter the night soon. Dommik walked over the plants, pummeling them down under his boots only to have them spring back up behind him as if he had never passed through. He checked his wrist-con and followed its compass to the nearest settlement, a half-league away.
He hoped, which was something Cyborgs Did Not Do, he hoped that he could buy a flower straight from the source, alive, dug up with roots and all.
He didn’t have alien currency on hand, coins forged deep within the tunnels on Xanteaus Trent, but he did have things to barter. That hope was only brought on by a bone-deep urge to get this job done and get Kat someplace safe.
Someplace they could both heal together.
Dommik looked back at the two ships in the distance, checking the landscape and listening to the breeze. No one was following him which was just as well, if Markoss sent a scout after him, he would have to keep that peon alive.
He reached down and untied his boots, setting them aside in the rushes before he shifted his lower body. He counted to ten, his bio-suit reformed, down to five, he tied back his hair and ended at one.
Dommik sprinted, low to the ground and out of sight toward his destination.
There was no sound but the rush of wind over his face and no one to see him but the suns in the sky, damning him and judging his form. Time slipped by as he closed in on his destination, minutes only, while his body ran with four legs, skittering with metal close to the ground.
He stopped short when his destination appeared. His extra limbs twisted back into hiding while he took cover at the edge of the stalks. He peeked through the gaps.
Pillars and a hole. Nothing more although he knew there were others. He checked his surroundings, finding it clear, and stepped out into the light.
The hole slipped into the darkness at an angle and as he got closer he saw that there was a staircase made out of stone that led deep within. Small white globes sat on the sides. They illuminated every step.
Dommik stared up at the sky. Always underground. Always fucking underground. He wasn’t the type of spider that thrived in the dirt, especially after his past experiences.
He should’ve known the settlements would be away from the sun and the heat of the day. The aliens couldn’t tolerate heat, they thrived in the cold. Their blood would slowly boil until they cooked and collapsed. Xanteaus Trent, their homeworld, was farther away from their sun and they adapted to accommodate it; just like humans had for their relatively temperate environment.
Dommik stepped down into the hole until he was swallowed up by the terra. His fingers flexed over his knife. By the time it leveled out he had an audience of a hundred staring at him.
“I come in peace,” He shouted, feeling like a space-age idiot. Two men draped in green pants, weaved by the stalks above approached him, their chests bare except for designs knifed into their skin brought out by scars. He didn’t need to look around to know there were no women present.
If they had women, it wouldn’t be here. The wood smelled of mold, the rocks uncarved, and the cavern in its entirety reeked of sweat and rot.
“Yhal en Erarth, pucha ere,” one of the two said in Trentian. Dommik closed his eyes and subsumed his inclination to kill the aliens back deep within himself and switched to Trentian. You’re from Earth, why are you here?
“I’m here to buy a flower.”
The same one spoke, his head rolled as he considered him, “We don’t sell to humans. We don’t negotiate with filth.”
“The Space Lord I came here with said you would.” Dommik didn’t mind name-dropping if it got him out of there faster. He placed his hand on his knife’s handle.
“We don’t follow the sect that lost this war and tainted our blood,” the alien bared his teeth, followed by the hundred still staring at them baring their teeth. “They have no jurisdiction amongst the pure.”
“Unfortunately for you, your moon lies within that sect’s jurisdiction.”
Dommik felt the change before it started, the rustle of beings all focused on their weapons, the one that was easily within reach. A target for one’s mind and the stiffening of muscles a moment before. He kept his eyes on the man before him.
“Xanteaus has forsaken them, his voice no longer fills their heads, we are here to rise up and take the impure down and restore the god’s star in pure soil. You taint holy ground, outsider.”
Dommik looked out calmly over the aliens, their bared bodies strained, their hands cupped and unclothed. Each an unlit wick waiting for the fire. Unconcerned hatred marred their faces.
“Markoss didn’t tell you I was coming, did he?”
&n
bsp; Several of the aliens closest to him stopped.
A trap?
He continued, “You don’t have to die, I’ll walk out of here and you’ll never see me again. One flower, with the roots still intact, is all I ask for.” The snake hiss of daggers being unsheathed filled his ears. “I’m not interested in war.” The aliens started to slink around him.
The sweat of impending battle stunk up the globe-glowed cavern.
“We will sacrifice you to Xanteaus, the god of gods and the star within the first world. There will be no accursed here!”
He let his Trentian kill-code arise and allowed the poison to build up in his system.
The alien savages expected a slaughter, and it looked like they were going to get one. Not the one they wanted, though. He turned into the metal monster that he was and let the venom that bubbled up from his body to bubble from his elongated teeth and from his fingertips.
He slashed and cut, dripping with rancor and vitriol, and soon the slop of alien blood as the first wave came at him. His legs came apart and then the real slaughter began.
It wasn’t until he climbed the cavern walls and sprayed down his poison that the screams took on a whole new pitch.
He left bodies in his wake, some dead, most almost dead as they succumbed to the acid in their veins and the paralysis. The aliens on the outskirts, untouched, began to back away while the brave began to shoot him down with bullets that ricocheted off his exoskeleton.
For every alien that dropped, two more took its place, and he had yet to enjoy the carnage. His joints popped and his mouth pulled out until it broke away from his face while the bones of his canines shifted underneath, soaking up the poison that was left over, and replaced with razor sharp steel.
Dommik let his control vanish in the battle cries and the spears that poked at his Cyborg body and dropped down on a horde of aliens, crushing their bodies under his heavy frame.
“Drop the dirt!”
“For the god of gods!”
He tore at their throats and roared with a mouth full of blood until the Trentians backed away. A rumble shook the ground followed by the stone floor cracking open. The dead and dying began to tremble and slip away as the wails of the aliens turned to cheers.