Alien Barbarian’s Little Human

19. Magog

CHAPTER 19

MAGOG

A n unproductive emotion boils inside of me. Panic. This is the very being who took my love away from me in my first two lives. The fact that it could happen again does not stray far from my mind.

“What have you done with Jessica?”

Nerita leans forward like a beast at the end of its leash. Anger seethes from hner every pore. She does not fear him enough, and I perhaps fear him too much.

The silver-eyed being’s face scrunches up into a mask of sheer malicious delight.

“How do you know there ever was a Jessica? Perhaps the girl you think you’ve known all this time has been me all along.”

Nerita shakes her head with vehemence.

“Impossible. Jessica had…has real emotions. A soul. You can’t mimic that, demon.”

Svarz’s evil snicker echoes through the makeshift cockpit. Then it adopts a look of sheer, sad innocence.

“Nurse Nerita, where are my Mommy and Daddy? Are they still alive? I heard people can be trapped under a building for months and still be okay. Can we go and look?”

Nerita’s lips form a thin, tight line as Svarz laughs.

“While you had to relearn everything from scratch each time you were reborn, I’ve been able to build upon my knowledge. I have masqueraded as many different beings over the millenia. Acting like someone you thought needed you was child’s play. No pun intended.”

My cybernetic eye scans Svarz’s form. His nanotech mimics the appearance and even the function of human flesh and blood. How else could he fool the medical scans Nerita subjected “Jessica” to?

That might give me an advantage. While imitating a human form, does that mean human weaknesses? Even a few seconds might give me the time for decisive action to end his threat once and for all.

For now, the best thing I can do is keep him talking.

“Do you really expect us to believe you lurked about in that medical clinic for weeks without revealing yourself? In the last two lives, you acted the moment you pegged her location.”

“Perhaps I was waiting for you, Gog, or whatever name you wear in this life. I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting that you’d come back as a cyborg.”

Svarz makes snide air quotes with his fingers.

“But the Precursors work in Enigmatic ways. Pathetic. You really worship those fools as gods?”

“And the people you serve are somehow better?”

“I don’t serve anything other than the idea of freedom. If the Precursors foreordained everything that will ever happen to everyone in the galaxy, then our free will means nothing. Only by eliminating all traces of your flawed species from the Galaxy can peace and freedom truly exist.”

Nerita sneers.

“So you’re going to prove your message of freedom and peace by committing murder? Makes perfect sense.”

Svarz’s smile fades.

“Murder is an organic term. A dead body has the same amount of molecules as a living body. The organic brain is effectively a computer. When a computer stops working, you don’t mourn, you acquire a new computer.”

“Sounds like he’s projecting to me, Magog.” Nerita narrowed her eyes. “I know for a damn fact you weren’t impersonating Jessica the entire time, so I’m going to ask you again: Where is she?”

“Oh, I’d imagine she’s pretty confused right about now. I wore your face, Nerita, to trick her into hiding. She’s probably wandering around your pathetic little hospital, crying her eyes out and wondering why you all abandoned her.”

My stomach twists in disgust. Despite his claims of altruism, this nanotech entity is irredeemable. Perhaps he does not believe in organic terms like good and evil. But I do. Nerita does. And I refuse to allow this evil to destroy my love yet again.

“You’re a monster,” Nerita sputters. She moves as if she’s going to throttle Svarz, but I hold her back.

“You might as well let her go, Magog,” Svarz says, still wearing Jessica’s face. “We can get this over with quickly. As usual, I only need to kill one of you. Make things easy for me, and I’ll let you and all of the patients on board live.”

“If you only need to kill one of us, then make it me,” I say, stepping forward. “Then you can let her go.”

“Hmm. Generous offer, but I’m afraid I’ll have to decline.” Svarz grins wickedly, his eyes flashing yellow. “You see, the two of you have already been intimate, so there’s a chance Nerita is pregnant. Such an early pregnancy would not be detectable by my sensor array. Slaying her is the only safe option.”

Svarz gestures as if I should step aside.

“Move, cyborg. You cannot stop me. You know this to be true.”

“Maybe not, but I can.”

Nerita steps out from behind me, wielding an electric suture device. It ‘welds’ cuts and lacerations together, useful when you don’t have time for stitches and the patient is losing too much blood.

Svarz smirks at the sight of the device.

“That can’t cause me the slightest harm. It’s merely a Zerberutech XLR.”

“Yeah,” she says “but this one’s been modified with you in mind, Jerk.”

Nerita pulls the trigger stud. An arc of blue light streaks out of the gun and envelops Svarz. Jessica’s form dissolves, falling apart into what looks at first glance like a silver liquid. Closer inspection reveals tiny cubes, not much larger than a grain of sand.

“I don’t know how long that’s going to last,” she says, powering down the device. “But it should disrupt Svarz’s magnetic cohesion for a while.”

I give her a look.

“When did you make those modifications?”

“About a day after my past life memories started banging around my head.” She puts a finger on her temple and grins. “Fortunately, the clinic database had a ton of info on nanotech, so I didn’t need the holonet for research. But as I said, I don’t know how long it will last. We need something more permanent.”

I look around the cockpit and frown.

“A pity we do not have an airlock, or we could just jettison him into space.”

I draw up a schematic of the original hover tank in my on board hard drive. No airlock, but there is a chute for the disposal of waste products.

“I think I have a plan, Nerita.”

I turn to find her holding a vacuum tube.

“So do I.”

And thus, the unspeakably evil villain from our live’s stories was taken care of with a vacuum cleaner and a space toilet. Nerita gave him another jolt from the suture device before we flushed him just to be sure.

I slide my arm around Nerita’s shoulders. She rests her head against me and sighs.

“Now what?”

“Now?” I kiss the top of her head, warmth spreading through my chest. “Now we live our lives to the fullest.”

Nerita purrs and snuggles up close.

“I could get used to that.”

She suddenly pushes away from me.

“After we rescue Jessica.”

I don’t bother trying to argue. Besides, I do not want to. The girl does not deserve such a cruel fate.

Getting down to Horus IV is much easier than getting out. Thanks to the hover tank’s small size and weak power signature, it doesn’t register on sensor arrays as a possible starship. This does mean it can be mistaken for a missile, however.

I’m about halfway through the atmosphere of Horus IV when the HUD flashes.

“We’ve got incoming…looks like Rippers. Six of them.”

“Ataxian fighter craft,” I grumble. “They believe we’re some kind of missile or bomb launched by the Alliance, no doubt.”

“What are we going to do?”

“They have superior speed and maneuverability, so we cannot outrun or outfly them.”

“Great, and they probably outgun us, too, right?” Nerita sighs.

“Affirmative.”

“Then what chance do we have?”

“Only one path remains open to us. Subterfuge. My implanted knowledge includes considerable amounts of Ataxian intelligence. Please open the communications array to channel 66.589.”

“Say what? I thought channels were always whole numbers.”

“Set the channel manually.”

“Oky, if you say so.”

The ships draw ever nearer. Soon they will be in weapons range. I must enact my plan, and quickly.

“Channel’s open, not that anyone will be listening,” Nerita says.

I deepen my vocal chords to sound more like a Grolgath and speak into the comms.

“This is Veyderut, call sign Red Harvest. Break off your pursuit immediately.”

Nerita covers her face with her hand.

“We’re doomed.”

I watch the heads up display, barely daring to breathe. Is my intelligence up to date? Or have the Ataxians changed their protocols for undercover operatives since I was grown and cryogenically frozen?

“They have a weapons lock,” Nerita says as the console flashes red.

I begin punching in a new vector. It might be next to impossible, but I will do my best to keep us alive.

Just as quickly as they came on, the red lights vanish.

“Wait, they stopped. They’re dropping back. How did you do that?”

“I made them believe we are an Ataxian spy ship on a secret mission of subterfuge. The Ataxians will not risk the wrath of their secret police, and obviously no one would man a missile.”

“You’re so sexy when you’re clever.”

She wraps her arms around my neck and kisses my cheek. I respond by pulling her into my lap and kissing her back, hard. Deep. Dominant.

When I let her come up for air, she looks at me in surprise.

“Wow, what got into you?”

“I am a Vakutan, this time. And I have waited three lifetimes for this.”

Despite my bravado, we only have time for a spirited make out session. Quite spirited. We ar efortunate to locate Jessica quickly. Alive and unharmed, we bring her back to the hover tank and again make the dangerous trek out of the atmosphere.

“What now?” Nerita asks, holding the sleeping Jessica on her lap. “Do we make for Alliance space?”

My expression sours. Perhaps the memories of what happened to the Ishani homeworld are still potent. Or maybe I’ve simply lost my taste for war.

“Or not?” Nerita says. “I don’t care if we go, as long as we’re together. And after the Alliance basically abandoned the survivors on Horus IV, I’m hardly heartbroken.”

“We could go to the Badlands and become Reaper Hunters.”

She gives me a shocked look, and I chuckle.

“I jest, my love. I was thinking we could make for Frontier space. There are many colonies who would welcome one of your medical talents.”

“Not to mention a nearly invincible cyborg,” she says. “All right, I like the idea of League space. But first, we need to drop the survivors off.”

In the end, we decide on leaving the patients on Alpha Centauri 5 in IHC space. Jessica has family there, and it’s a travel hub for the rest of the galaxy. Our patients will be able to find their way home, eventually.

“You did a good thing,” Nerita says as we watch the last of them taken into proper medical care.

“No, we did a good thing, my love. And while we can heal their bodies, the horrors of Horus IV will remain indelibly etched upon them for the rest of their lives. They have a long road to recover, mentally and spiritually.”

“I’m so glad you got me out of there.”

We remain docked at the Alpha Centauri spaceport for several weeks while we work out the purchase of a lightly used starship. I had been created to be the ultimate warrior and bodyguard, but my creators never considered that a higher power’s hands were at work. I feel their unseen guidance again as we prepare to leave for League space.

“It’s so weird,” Nerita says as we board our new ship for the first time. “How are we going to do this? I mean, live our lives while also remembering that we were reincarnated…twice?”

“We do it by living this life to its absolute fullest, my love.”

Suddenly, she’s in my arms, and I taste her sweet lips again. Micah. Chloe. Nerita. At last, I hold my fated mate close, and know that nothing will ever tear us apart again.

Not even when the stars lose their shine.