Cosmic savior a space op.., p.8
Cosmic Savior: (A Space Opera Adventure) (Interstellar Gunrunner Book 3), page 8
Tusky’s grim news made me think back on Palamar’s rant about the infamous Maker and his experiments to “humanize” the cosmos. “I have a few theories about that.”
“As do I,” Tusky said, nodding soberly. “To your point, Bodhi, I’ve been expressly told that my genetic structure is unsuitable for replication or tampering. Hence… no vaccine is possible. Not from my genes, that is.”
“But you’re still immune to it, aren’t you?”
“In a manner of speaking…”
“Well, use whatever manner you need to explain the situation to me. Break it down into fool logic, if you have to.”
“Perhaps it’s best I show you.” Tusky stood and gestured to a nearby terminal. “Much like you, I have many questions related to this particular subject.”
“Color me surprised.”
“Ah, there’s that famous irony! How charming. Come, let me show you some of my research.”
Rolling my eyes, I moved to the terminal and watched Tusky operate the holo-pad with surprisingly deft claw-tapping.
He began pulling up hundreds of charts, electron scans, swab results… his personal terminal resembled a science academy’s entire archive collection. Evidently, my furry friend had been hard at work since his leap into self-awareness.
Now, if some of this dry biology is lost on you, let me provide a brief layman’s account to explain why I was pinning so much on Tusky. This is important stuff. After all, the Second Plague of Kruthara shaped the universe you now inhabit, whether you know it or not. Spare a bit of attention.
An unbearably long time ago, a deity-like being known as Kruthara was playing in its own sandbox far away from the humanoids. It enjoyed creating species and planets out of thin air (or vacuum, in this case). But another, equally powerful humanoid known as the Maker wasn’t so jazzed about this. They got into a massive war. The Maker captured Kruthara and tortured it until it could be molded into a biological weapon capable of infecting its own creations—first and foremost, Kruthara’s namesake species, the krutharans.
Well, turns out the krutharans weren’t happy about this schedule of events. To get a little payback, a few krutharan rebels captured the last bits of their dying god and unleashed them on future humanoids—you, me, and most other species. How is this possible? Easily. As referenced above, Kruthara was a living weapon. It could be “engineered” to target any type of DNA, anywhere, and hunt it down ruthlessly. Thus, humans and humanoids were the target.
Tusky was my last hope because he hadn’t been made by the Maker, nor was he the intended target of Kruthara. In fact, one of the only surviving krutharans had told me that Tusky’s species was a direct creation of Kruthara. So, on the one hand, it made sense that he’d been able to devour that red slug and not be infected. But on the other, how could he not also serve as a basis for a vaccine? If he was carrying live krutharan genes and had already proven his immunity, why couldn’t we just pop him into a five-speed molecular atomizer and extract a cure?
“There we are.” Tusky pulled up a vid of squirming, tentacle-riddled cells. “These dastardly little microbes represent our earliest look at Kruthara’s structure.”
“You mean, I’m looking at Kruthara?”
“Yes. It was taken from an isolated sample shortly after the war began.” He pulled up a second vid alongside the first, this one displaying similar cells—with one exception. They were smaller, more shriveled. “These, by comparison, are my cells.” Finally, he pinned a chart showing two utterly baffling columns of letters. “These readouts represent a genetic comparison of the two samples. As you can clearly see”—I couldn’t—“my cells differ in several key areas. Namely, they are not infectious to humanoids. And furthermore, they are incomplete.”
This last detail I was able to glean from the red X marks that denoted missing genetic information. I squinted at the technical mumbo jumbo.
“So what’s it all mean? You’re a bad clone of Kruthara?”
“Not quite,” Tusky said. “I believe this is clear evidence that my people were, in fact, created by this being at some point. But it’s also evidence that time and radiation have taken a toll on my genetic structure.”
“Uh-huh…”
“As a result, the science teams have been unable to work with my genes to produce any form of countermeasure or vaccination strain. They’ve had to supplement the missing links with workable DNA—that of humanoids.”
“Which means any of your samples are able to be infected,” I said, using my big-brain scientist logic.
“Correct.” Tusky opened yet another vid, this one showing a group of harmless-looking cells being literally swallowed by the tentacular Kruthara microbes. “As seen here, every one of our vaccine samples was targeted by Kruthara. Even the slightest humanoid presence in strains is recognized as a foreign threat.”
“So… you’re not immune?”
He shook his head. “I am immune, yes, but only because I lack humanoid DNA. Kruthara’s creations are still wholly alien, even to me.” A shadow of fear crept into his eyes. “It’s strange to see your creator in such a light, Bodhi. Prior to sentience, I knew nothing of what had made me. Now that I see what Kruthara has become… it is… unsettling.”
“Welcome to religion,” I said sourly. “Listen, I think you ought to keep working with… all this. It could be promising. One step away from a breakthrough.”
“It would infuse me with great honor to work under the direction of my father.”
“Alright, Tusky… let’s avoid that term.”
“Very well.” He grinned. “It would be so marvelous to see my research result in profits for you. Perhaps enough to recoup the cost of my birth.”
I sighed wistfully. “That would certainly make me proud. As a friend. Not a father.” I turned my attention back to the vids. In particular, I focused on the one with his corrupted cells. “About this ‘damaged DNA’ thing, though. That’s you?”
He nodded, then showed me yet another vid. It featured the same sickly-looking cells, only now they were even more frayed.
“This footage was recorded two weeks after the initial vid,” he explained. “I have reason to believe that my cells began degrading the moment I was released from my containment canister… and that they will continue to degrade. Whether this genetic decomposition is linear or exponential, I cannot say.”
I chewed on that for a moment, then grasped his meaning through all the big words and biology jargon. “Are you dying?”
“Technically speaking, Bodhi, we are all dying at every—”
“Spare the spiel; I’ve given it plenty of times before.” I looked him up and down. “Is it true, Tusky? Does it mean what I think?”
His mouth tightened into a stoic line. “My death seems to be a rapidly encroaching certainty, yes. I’ve already detected biomarkers that suggest my genetic replication is slowing… becoming more aberrant. In addition, I discovered two rather fascinating tumorous growths—”
I waved a hand to shut him up. “Does Gadra know?”
“No, most assuredly not,” he whispered. “I’ve yet to disclose this information to anybody except you, Bodhi. I believed that you deserved to know, on account of your supposed lack of sensitivity about the topic of death.”
“Who told you I’m insensitive!?”
“Just about everybody, I believe.”
Bastards, the whole lot. I pinched my brow and leaned against the table. “Well, just for now, let’s keep it between us. And keep running those tests. Things might change.”
Tusky offered a subtle head dip that I took as a nod.
Then a strange, unspoken moment passed between the two of us. I’d never seen Tusky in this way, and certainly never imagined him so, but I still felt the specter of loss coming over me. It’s peculiar, being struck by the tragedy of somebody you previously didn’t know existed. Then again, in retrospect, I believe all tragedy happens this way.
What I mean is, the object of our empathy always existed long before we knew of them. We think of them as existing the moment they stroll into our awareness, but in reality, they lived just fine before they knew we existed, either. If you believe in a soul mate, let me offer this: Said soul mate bumbled through the cosmos for years and years before you had that fateful love-at-first-sight meeting. Even as you experienced that first rush of butterflies or worked up the nerve to kiss them, their expiration dates were already baked into the marrow of their bones. And in the end, when death finally takes them, you seldom think about the time you actually had together. Instead you think of the wasted time that came before you met them. You wish you’d known them sooner—known them forever, to be precise.
This nebulous, soul-aching feeling was what I felt as I looked Tusky in his eyes. His hopeful, beady, all-too-human eyes.
Then a door slid open, breaking the psychic link.
Gadra strode into view and folded her arms across her chest. “Are you done yappin’ so I can show you my sweet tats?”
Six
Admittedly, young Gadra’s collection of tattoo samples was pretty “sweet,” as the youth might say. Impressive, even. She’d applied ink to a quarter of the insurgents in this facility and had apparently also tatted up the crew of several visiting ships. Her linework and mastery of color were, much as with her paintings, glorious. The girl had a gift for art in all forms.
Foremost among her ambitions—after launching an orbiting tattoo parlor, supposedly—was learning more about a topic she’d dug up in the insurgency’s archives.
“They’re called hypnotic mandalas,” she explained, waving her homemade tattoo gun dangerously close to my arm. “It’s like a pattern, right? A mystical pattern. And people look at it, and their heads just… ka-plow! Y’know? Like, it stuns ’em. Or kills ’em. I dunno. I need to read more.”
Being that I was a man of science, not mysticism, I doubted it was possible to tattoo the sort of mind-chewing imagery needed to literally incapacitate or kill somebody. But Gadra was keen on studying the idea in full, and Ruena had a don’t-crush-her-stupid-dream expression, so I let it slide. What was the harm in letting the girl believe in a bit of folklore from a madman’s tome?
Well, as a matter of fact, I bring this topic up because it would play an absurd role in the days to come. But such is fate. It always knocks at your door before it steps inside.
And besides, there were more troubling things to consider about Gadra’s latest pursuit. During my absence she’d developed a bizarre obsession with depicting scenes of slaughter and carnage. Severed heads, planets mid-vaporization, sun-bleached bones…
The more unsettling implications of a trauma-scarred child tattooing these motifs were lost on me, however. That was work for the resident psychiatrist. I was more curious as to whether Shalguth, my ship’s living engine, would enjoy her skin-needling as much as her paintings. And by enjoy, I mean reward me with fuel. This train of thought naturally guided me to thoughts about my vessel. My home, in some sense.
I thought about dear old Stream Dancer intently as I sat in the facility’s chow hall, surrounded by throngs of insurgent fools who wanted to know far too much about my recent exploits.
“What was it like in the Contrition?” one asked with a groupie’s enthusiasm.
“How’d you escape?” another pitched in.
Truthfully, I was more keen on eating my reheated soy steak than answering anybody. But as they say, optics are everything. So between bites, I halfheartedly delivered my account of the escape to my wayward fans.
“And that, fellow fighters,” I finished around a mouthful of risotto, “is how I carried out the greatest prison break of all time. No help needed!”
The sycophantic legion oohed and aahed.
Thankfully, just as the insurgents began prying about the specifics of my tale, the doors slid open, and Chaska wandered in.
“Back to your stations,” she commanded my fans. She watched them shuffle off, grumbling and gossiping, then settled down across from me. “Where are your tour guides?”
“Oh, occupied with casual things… like fixing one of Gadra’s coils after it nearly took Ru’s hand off.” I peered around anxiously. “Perhaps I should be asking where your guest is.”
“Ah, so now she’s my guest.”
“You did drop the field for her and welcome her in. Folklore says it’s bad luck to invite an inustrazan into your dwelling, I’ll have you know.”
Chaska gave me another dead-eyed stare. “I invited you in. Seems you two are a package deal now.”
“That’s what she said, is it?”
“That’s right.”
I swallowed my last bit of shriveled soy, then slid the tray to the side. “Well, she has some rather funny ideas about our ‘package.’ Wait, that came out wrong.”
“Sure, Bodhi.” She glanced away. “She told me everything. The escape, the Hegemony’s new alliance, the rendezvous gone sour…”
“Not bad, huh? Well, except the Hegemony flip-flop part.”
Chaska picked at her nails. “To answer your original question, your wife-to-be is currently getting in touch with her hive-world. She insisted it be a private transmission. So I suspect you two will either be shuffling along or getting us all killed shortly. Probably both.”
“Oh, that? I’m not going.”
“What do you mean, not going?” she asked coldly.
“Come on, Chaska. You really think I finagled my way here, back to you, just so I could end up chained to that woman’s bedposts?”
“If you turn her down, she’s going to massacre everybody in this place.”
“Bah. She’s all bark, no bite.”
“I mean it,” Chaska hissed. “I’m not letting you put this entire installation in danger because you promised that stuck-up princess the wrong thing.”
Her tone stopped me in my tracks. When you negotiate long enough, you become able to discern between a “soft no” and a “hard no.” This was an example of a hard no. A titanium-hard no. She was more than fine with feeding me to the proverbial wolves.
“Chaska,” I said quietly, “I came back here for—”
“For me? Save it, Bodhi. Please. I’m too tired to deal with this.”
“So, what? We’re done?”
“We never started.”
“But I sent you that final transmission, gushing my heart out!”
She nodded solemnly. “And I appreciated it. But I only came here to give you a send-off, make sure we were squared up. I can’t have any more of your stunts threatening my people—or yours.”
And with that, Chaska stood up and made for the exit.
Obviously, I followed.
“Let’s not be hasty about this,” I called as she led me down corridor after corridor, doing her best to feign ignorance about my puppy-dog routine. “Chaska, let’s sit down over a glass of wine, talk this out. Communication is key in relationships!”
“Indeed it is,” she said, swiping a card to open a door labeled Ready Room 1. “And since we aren’t in a relationship of any kind, I think we’ve communicated enough.”
“Ready room, all to yourself? Moving up in the world.”
She sighed and entered, but I was quick to follow. Her haunt was fittingly spartan—a steel desk, a private terminal, a few shelves stocked with holo-drives, and a half-empty coffee carafe.
“Nice place,” I commented.
“Battlefield promotion. That’s what happens when leadership starts dying out… or being absorbed by Kruthara.”
“Well, would you look at that? I, too, was recently accosted by Kruthara. See? We have connections left and right.”
Chaska slumped in her chair and stared up at me. “What do you want, Bodhi?”
“Just to talk.”
“I’m not one of your clients. You can’t just sweet-talk your way into a deal between us. Not for guns, not for love. Got it?”
“Perfectly understood.” Sensing her hidden meaning, I sank down in a chair opposite hers. “So, tell me about your life. What’s new?”
“I wasn’t inviting you to talk.”
“You sure?”
“Very.”
“Huh.” I shrugged. “Well, since I’m here anyway, we might as well do our jig.” When I saw the imminent rage-shriek on her face, I held up my hands in surrender. “Hear me out, Chaska. I’ll play by Amodari’s rules, alright? When she says we’re leaving, I’m gone. Going by that point, I’m only here for a few more minutes. Can you really not stand chewing the fat with me in the meantime?”
“Promise me you’ll go.”
“I promise.”
“Swear on your soul.”
That was an easy one. I’d already sworn on my soul (and probably lost it) on eleven different occasions.
“Very well, Chaska. I swear on my immortal soul that I will leave upon Amodari’s command.”
Satisfied, or close to it, Chaska meshed her hands on her lap. “Get on with it.”
“Do you really think fate played no role in delivering me back to you?”
“Amodari seems to think it was Kruthara.”
“Fate, Kruthara… same thing. My point is, there are no coincidences, Chaska. Everything happens for a reason!”
She shook her head. “Like Amodari being the one who located you and staged a rescue. There you go, Bodhi—the universe gave you a savior. Again.”
“But what if I’m—we’re—the real saviors? We could fix this.”
“You just got out of Kemedis’ hellhole. You don’t know up from down. You certainly don’t understand this war.”
“But I understand you.”
“Do you?”
“I’d like to think so.”
“Think what you like. You’re on the way out… once you leave this installation, it’s done. You get that, right?” I scrambled frantically for a verbal evasion, but Chaska went on. “If you’ve said your piece, then I’d kindly ask you to head back to the mess hall and wait for your princess. I have things to do.”
Upon saying this last phrase, her gaze slid toward a shriveled, leather-bound book with frayed pages at the edge of her desk.
