The Last Omega in the Galaxy (Scales and Tails of Fate #1)

Chapter Two

Noel

Today will be different.

Today will be different.

Today will be different.

Today is different.

Vil

Unlike most of my crewmates, I spared myself the indignity of a suit as I masked up. Space radiation did nothing to me. The background lack of atmospheric pressure didn’t bother me. Little did, after all. I only needed air, and not much of it. I popped a mask on and fitted the mouthpiece, hooking the tube and concentrated air reservoir at my side. I dropped a pelletized oxide into the liquid chamber and let it react, building oxygen while I shuffled into a pair of cargo pants. With a quick gesture, I clipped it to my belt and glanced over my shoulder at my men.

Gorm held back from adventures, and while I’d told Sarge to keep his ass inside, he was strangely protective over me. He stood beside me fastidiously running pressure checks over his suit, one buckle at a time, before hitting the ten-point trigger to tighten and pressurize all the chambers in it. Looked fucking dumb and uncomfortable as hell, but I kept it to myself. Sarge meant well, and despite being in his late forties, he had grown from a brash young man to this weird paternal figure to me. Sarge had dad energy enough for all of us.

Sometimes we needed it.

When the airlock alarm went off, Merriel’s voice chimed up. “Hey, boss! Try not to get eaten, man.”

“Will do, Mer,” I said above the slight hiss of depressurization. I pushed my mask up to get a seal on the mouth bit and readied to step free, engaging gravity on my boots, the magnetized gyroscopes within doing something I had zero inkling of to simulate localized adhesion.

After my eyes adjusted to the lights surrounding me, the view of barren rock and scorched metals came into view. The hunk of debris we rested on was no mere asteroid, but a depleted mine they’d used to build on for secrecy.

Below the horizon of searing sunlight, I engaged the shades over my mask to obfuscate the blinding shine, bringing into view the ugliest and most dilapidated skeletal remains of a research facility I’d ever seen. Designed only with conservation of materials in mind, it leaned in places amid chipped-away rubble and curled rebar from meteorites long passed.

“Yep, looks abandoned.” Sarge’s confirmation made me roll my eyes as four other men spread out behind me, choking up on laser weapons I’d never had patience for. I preferred to use my bare hands.

After a brief assessment, we made the trek toward the building, my boots scratching over uneven, jagged surfaces, still glossy in spots from atmospheric melt or being stricken by some super-heated projectile. As if on cue, a small one came crashing down near us, throwing debris about before it floated away. Glassine slag cooled into amorphous shapes before leaving my sight. “Careful, guys.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice.” Sarge nudged me to keep going, and we approached the airlock doors, near welded shut from years of projectile impacts. “Bleak-ass shit.”

“Yeah.” I gestured for one of the men at my side to rush forward as they engaged their weapons into a solid blade, sawing into the seams of the doorways.

Governments made these to withstand the forces around 500 years ago, not the plasma blade laser weapons of the present. With an easy stretch, I yawned into my mask, condensation and somewhat unpleasant breath flooding my face before being filtered out. Gag. I needed to brush my fangs later. I tongued between my cuspids and studied the conical shapes for any fuzzy spots.

“You’re gonna wanna see this, Captain.” One of my other men called me away from the door and to the side. I followed, eying where he stared. A collapsed black exoskeleton had adhered to the side of the building with sloughing fluid. It seemed fairly fresh. It had been shed within the last few days, at most.

The ghoulish image of some giant scorpion-lobster beast. I reached forward to touch the still-sticky fluid and grinned. “They’ll be hiding. Good find.”

“What’d you find?” Sarge’s voice rang over my mask’s intercom.

“Recent shed. Kanoik is somewhere hiding.” I checked the ventral plate of the shed and counted only two segments. Female. “Means she’s eaten recently.” I quietly celebrated the horrific thing’s weakness and returned just as they’d cleared the last segment of the door. My time to shine.

Since I was the biggest, and by proxy the most blooded of all of my crew, the Scavengers, salvage pirates extraordinaire, I stamped forward and braced my shoulders, digging my bare hands into existing gouges on the metal for purchase. I snarled and put my best force into it as I wrenched backward and, inch by inch, pulled the new plug free with a clang that was more felt through the ground than heard. Sound didn’t travel well without air.

The insides that greeted us were dark and bleak. Dust and debris coated every surface as I led the way in. Each foot buckled a little unevenly as I used my tail to find nonexistent balance. The only gravity I had was from my boots, so my tail prodded around me to make sure things were okay. “Electrical is still running,” I said as I ran a hand down the wall, allowing my electrosensory pores pick up the hum of energy driven by solar and thorium radiation. Progenitors’ sake, it was so antiquated. Made me glad Sarge had a lead-lined suit.

We spread out, noting things on our scouting trip, me leading the way to give corridors the all clear. The lack of space debris inside made me confident the kanoik wasn’t already in there. But that didn’t mean the place wasn’t rigged to explode at the first wrong fart.

“This place is giving me the ick bad, Captain.” Sarge moved closer to me and covered my flank as we moved deeper.

“Imagine how I feel.”

“Home sweet home?” I could hear the grin in his voice. I’d be able to see the grin later when he got that stupid suit off.

I shuddered and marched forward, following the trace lines of power through the wall, setting my electrosensitive pores on edge. Despite my size and strength, I was still afraid of labs, would always hold that gnawing disgust. Because I couldn’t get over what had been done to me. I never would.

My fingers traced a wall panel with a place to enter a code. I wanted to signal for someone to bring their cutter over, but a solid jerk and twist of the handle had it open. I was just thankful that cloying antiseptic scent didn’t flood my senses when the darkness within greeted me.

“Identify,” a mechanical voice said as the lights slowly powered on, most bulbs flickering or not turning on at all.

“Shit!” Sarge stumbled back as instinct clipped at the back of my mind.

I shut the door behind us with a quick snap and put a hand on Sarge’s side, calming him. “N01-5-2, reporting in.” My voice cracked as I said it, and the already taut muscles under my grip went tighter when he gave me a horrified look. I pressed my hand to a spot on the wall to earn a beep. RFID still worked after all those years.

I couldn’t read the look on Sarge’s face, but his tense muscles and canted head rang of fear. “Cap’n…”

“I’ll explain later. You knew I was high percentage.”

He nodded slowly, but maybe because I couldn’t see his eyes, I missed what he wanted me to see. I turned, heart skipping as two wide-open eyes in a frozen container greeted me. I calmly turned away from the intimate view to take a centering breath. I placed a hand over my viewscreen and blocked the sight out for a moment.

A new message joined the logs, and Merriel sent it to my mask. Make it stop. The text scrolled across the corner of my viewscreen. The tinny text-to-speech voice made me hesitate.

“Is she alive?” Sarge took a step toward the unit, but I put a hand on his shoulder to stare.

High cheekbones framed a pale face with a dusting of silver, pearlescent scales starting at delicate collarbones transitioning to a rocky grayish blue. Full lips formed a flat, emotionless line. A dainty nose, slightly upturned and pointed, rose from a delicate face. The scales, unlike mine which dominated my back and body, only dusted the arms and shoulders of this creature, transitioning to porcelain skin. And atop his head had been pinned a crown of pale-blue hair. Iridescent eyes lay frozen toward mine, pupilless like mine, tears of ice crusted at the lash lines.

“What is she?” Sarge took another step back as I studied the inscription atop the chamber.

“N03-1.” I’d read the label already, and not in my wildest dreams did I imagine what lay within. “No fucken way…”

“Vil? Vil, you’re scaring me. Your spines are up, man.”

I prickled as the thin spines down my neck and back rose and my scales rippled. I’d never been exposed to an unrelated one of my kind before. High-blooded progeny, ones not made from the same stock.

I pressed a few buttons and wrenched at the door as airlocks released. If they were alive like I thought—I stared at them from head to toe, a simple white gown and more electrodes than anyone knew what to do with. Reverently, I pulled the wires from delicately scaled skin as I studied the hard flesh beneath my fingertips. Freezing had never worked on me, and obviously had not worked on the—I hesitated, leaning in to smell the frozen odor of them.

“You angry, boss?”

“No.” I clawed at the wires and pulled the body into my arms. “Clear the men from the main halls. Have Doc on standby in medical.” The willowy, tall form within stood a few inches of height lower than my own statuesque frame. Even still, by designation alone, I knew the creature was purer than me.

Despite the freezing temperatures, they hung limply over my arms.

Pack enough chemicals into muscle fibers instead of blood and anything can remain flexible while freezing. The cold didn’t bother me though.

Sarge called into med bay, shouting for someone to get Doc out of the holodeck. He spent so much time in there masturbating that it wasn’t funny.

“Then finish off and—” Sarge’s body posture stiffened. “Gooning? What the fuck is gooni—”

A snort of disgust cluttered the line of coms. Doc had my line shut off because I pestered him too much, so I couldn’t hear the other end. It was likely filthy. Not that I sought Doc out much, in that way, at least. He was too human for me.

Doc was such a low-percentage hybreed that the only detail he possessed was a longer tongue and slitted pupils.

“Tell him it’s an old one.” I snarled the words as my body tensed and vibrated. I knew what I held. I knew that millions of credits could be mine in a heartbeat for the creature’s blood alone, but I had until they were warm to calm my mind, or I’d do something I regretted.

Sarge repeated my words and stiffened. “On our way. Everyone! Stay on site documenting and hauling. We’re heading back in. Feel free to call for assistance, but we’ve found something good.”

I wished he’d not said the last part, but I lashed my tail, snapping the nameplate above the pod off before we evacuated. Scores of temporary inked barcodes and scars lined pale flesh amid the powdery gray scales. The sky-blue strands of hair practically flowed over my fingers like the tendrils of a Venusian flycatcher in a soft breeze floating out of gravity.

If I was right…