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

Chapter Three

Vil

“Well, what do we have here? A bitchcicle?” Doc slouched into the room, reeking of fresh soap from a shower. His dark hair lay flat down the back of his neck and wide green eyes blinked lazily. I squinted at him, and he squinted back with equal vitriol. He peeped over the body of the draconian creature, slender legged and willowy, possessing a tail as fine and silken with rocky scales as the rest of their back. It reminded me of fish skin. “Oooor…”

He tilted his head and peeked under the gown. “Ooh! A bastardcicle?”

“He’s N03.”

“A—” Doc froze for a moment. All pretense of the laziness he’d showed before left. “Lock medbay. Only second, myself and Vil allowed.”

Merriel gave a quick note of agreement. “On it.”

Doors around the area slammed into place as Sarge jumped.

“Is he… I know it was only a rumor. They are a trigendered species…” Doc hummed and glanced up the hem of the gown once more, lips twisted in slight confusion. The shape of their hips and waist, though, said something much different. “Omega?”

“I really think so. Internal genitals.” I stared long and hard at the waif of a creature below me. N03 had been a myth at first, the missing piece they’d discounted to their own disadvantage. The reason a hybreed would never be complete. Would never be Naleucian.

The concept of a third-gender being required for reproduction baffled scientists, and they discounted it as polyamory, debauchery, sinful. But to the Naleucian—the third gender had been made largely redundant. Artificial wombs could carry children, and omegas needed only donate aneucleic eggs for their mRNA a cycle or two to make sure that things carried on.

I trailed a hand along a stiff leg, over scaled flesh that patterned out into too-pale skin with a near sparkle to it. If it were part of their species or a byproduct of the cryogenic freezing, I wouldn’t be able to say until they’d thawed.

“So, Progenitors identify as all males, right?” Doc attached a few probes here and there to the prone creature’s body.

“A little more complex than that. Hybreeds are a sort of blend. We are two genes merged. The alpha core has to pair with a beta core, creating a nucleus. So, internally, all hybreeds over a certain percentage have to be both chimeric. All my brothers and myself were.” Doc knew everything about me, even the things Sarge didn’t, and I spoke openly with the old pervert. For as young as he looked, skin smooth and hair dark—he was blessed with the unaging genes, if nothing else. “Progenitors only really have one pronoun and it’s loosely translated as he .”

He made a noncommittal noise. “Oh, yeah… Progenitor’s sake, it’s been so long since I studied this. Eighty? Ninety years?”

I nodded. “He’s a real Progenitor. Their bearer.”

A possessiveness flowed through me. Whatever I was worth on the black market, cut piece by piece, was insignificant compared to him. Even sickly and thawing on the table, warm fluids running through his veins as Doc reversed the cryogenic process, he was irresistible. Everything I sought.

“Pity he’s not a direct of N01 or N02.” Doc did as many often did, dismissed the third gender. He failed to see the draw that I, as a short line from N01, the original alpha, had.

“He’s perfect as he is,” I said, tracing my large hand up his slender arm. Even his colors complemented my own, a dark blue next to his silvery pale.

“Don’t get your hopes up. I read those logs.” Doc snorted and lifted one of N03’s eyelids to reveal the beauty of his eyes. Dark-black sclera, a ring of icy blue, and a slitted pupil so blown wide that nothing else showed but a thin circle. “He’s gotta be—” Doc made a gesture by his head and whistled.

“Possibly.” I nodded, unable to discount that probability. Still, the male was beautiful to behold. “Want my input?”

“Sure. Humor me.” Doc loaded up a syringe with some sort of amber liquid and thumped the barrel. “I think enough antidepressants to knock out a horse is a good start. Maybe some statins… The combo should cause short-term memory loss.”

“Oxytocin and Dopamine. Just overload him.” I stared down and lost myself in thought. “That’s how they pulled some of us out.” I’d been in stasis once. I barely remembered it.

“I’ll follow protocol and take that as a backup.”

I nodded and fought my urge to stay, trailing fingertips down his forearm to trace his dainty palms that turned toward his body and curled. From reflex, they tightened over my hand when I stroked. And strangely, my heart fluttered.

Not wanting to waste any further time, I turned back and waved at Doc. “Call me when they’re awake.”

Doc didn’t answer, but I needed to get back out into the field to supervise my remaining men because I was too distracted.

***

It was of no surprise the following morning after many trips that we’d found quite the haul of cryogenic chambers and samples of Progenitor blood far purer than my own but unstable. No telling how many times they’d been frozen and thawed, but we stabilized them in the medical bays with promises of buyers to come. Still, no word came from Doc as I put my head into the med bay and resisted all urges to check on our new guest.

On my third trip of the day as we filled the cavernous space of our loading bay, I found what I’d been dreading, a kanoik nest. Freshly laid. The mass of sticky webbing had been crammed into the corner of a room amid upset and crushed furniture, guarding the little alcove.

Rather than dirty my boots, I borrowed a plasma gun and trained it on the myriad of peanut-shaped eggs. I observed diligently as I approached the crumbling outer wall of an air-locked and quarantined part of the building. “Anyone listening?” My mask’s speaker crackled as I received a few acknowledging noises.

“Evacuate slowly. I found a nest and I’m going to zap all the babies and I do not want the mamma going nuts.”

“On it.” Sarge whistled into the mic and rounded up the rest of the men, informing them to fuck off while big daddy handled the worst of it.

The eggs popped and splattered as my plasma gun sent out a stream that vaporized each one of them into curls of ash and a flash of circular light.

My sensors around me were near useless, but my electrosensory pores were as keen as any shark from Mater Terra. I could sense their muscles twitching a dozen yards away.

Satisfied with the nest, I turned and skulked about, wondering if I could take out the mother while I was at it. With no witnesses, I wouldn’t have to hold back. My men might not be quite as loyal to me if they knew the price my head could fetch.

I let my spines along my back rise, special holes in my clothing extending the range of my electroreceptors, sensing out the slight pulses of muscles twitching.

Aside from being overwhelmed by the power running through the walls, I tuned it out one step at a time until only weak pulses drew me through the facility, gun migrating to a holster on my hip as I let my guard down and opened the pores along my upper lip and exposed neck that acted as a sort of chemoreceptor, part heat pit like a viper. I’d never learned if it was a gift from the Progenitors or a gift from the Tal genes that had bridged my blood.

Pheromones tickled my senses, a female fresh from estrus, weak from parthenogenesis and shedding. She was a perfect target and unworthy adversary.

“Here, kitty kitty…” I carefully stalked my prey until the grayish, fleshy creature of an unhardened kanoik greeted me.

Its compound jaws opened, the convoluted spaces of its maw unsettling when its shell hadn’t hardened yet. The doughy flaps opened to reveal a throat of fangs and radula, fit for spearing into a body and funneling in digestive juices. It made no sound, but I knew what one would sound like with an atmosphere. I’d only heard them once, but it reminded me of a cicada, only louder and far more ominous. “Oh, fuck off.”

It took a scrambling step back on its many soft limbs.

“Any species sufficiently developed eventually routes their evolutionary tree toward that of the crab in a process most known as carcinization .” I muttered the thought to myself darkly as I snarled and took a deep breath.

It was cold enough I didn’t need oxygen for a few minutes, but I flooded my system with a few more deep breaths anyway before I ripped my mask off and crouched, ready to launch.

The ululating call of the beast didn’t hit my ears as it screeched again and I sprang forward, teeth at the ready.

It was warm. The typical crunch of shell didn’t greet me, just the leathery hide that hadn’t hardened yet. I needed more. I needed less. Something harsh enough to make me feel enough adrenaline to wipe my mind of my troubles. I needed…blood.

Oh, how I missed killing.

Visceral emotions tore themselves through my chest as I ripped leg from carapace, intent on finding its three hearts to destroy the beast for good. Of course, it wouldn’t be the only kanoik, but a dead kanoik was a good one.

Its softened, chitinous fangs bit into hide far stronger than any leather and tore away with ruffled scales alone. The burn of acid dripped over my shoulder and side, cutting into my clothing. My shirt fell away in tatters, the remnants of it floating until blood and acid joined in globules rotating and shimmering slowly through the surrounding space. Bubbles and lights like that of solstice and baubles of the Festivus circled until I gave into all urges to move the twin row of plates along my spine to let my wings spring free in triumphant show.

Wings that so very few hybreeds possessed. “Progenitors, hear me!”

I exhaled into the void, letting the sucking vacuum of space keep my chest locked. My clawed fingers ripped into tender flesh and the meat of a creature lacking bones pulled free under my grip until the knotted ganglion of pulsing chambers shivered in my palms. A quick squeeze had one then two disposed of. A third lay out of my reach. But it, too, met its end within a moment.

Faced with the dead creature laying before me, I huffed as I stood, glancing around for something to wipe my hands off on. Everything in the place had been so long degraded or eaten by the creatures. It left only my own shorts for a quick wipe that would have Sarge growling at me later. I sighed as I tucked my wings away neatly, the sails of them useless without gravity and atmosphere, not that I’d been on a planet with enough oxygen to fly in too many years. They were all for show, or mating display, not that I’d found a partner worth showing them to.

When I placed my oxygen mask back on, the cathartic sigh that left me took a year of stress away with it. A crack in the speaker cut loose a shout and swear, and I took off toward the ship running, my grav boots slamming into the broken landscape.

“Going crazy!” The barking cry in my ear threw me for a loop. I didn’t recognize the speaker right away.

Either a kanoik had gotten in or N03 had gotten out .

Fuck.

A few more crackled swears and a slam had me busting into the equalization chamber. I danced on the balls of my feet while the pressure filled, slow enough not to make my ears bleed but not fast enough to suit me.

I burst through the doors the second they opened with a hiss and beelined for the med bay.

It wasn’t a kanoik.

I stared down the hall and made eye contact with N03, his pupils only slits as the ice of them settled on me over a field of crumpled, groaning crewmen.

None dead… At least there’s that.

“Holy fuck, what is that?” Gorm choked from behind a terminal, chest heaving.

“Cryogenic wake up gone wrong,” I said, rushing past.

Magenta smears of pink blood, shining a sickly yellow in the light, in fluoresce, didn’t look as innocuous inside as it did out, which caught the eyes of a few men as my gaze locked onto the Progenitor.

“Nefil!” He pointed at me and I snagged him in my much larger arms, muscling him into the med bay as he struggled and pushed me away.

“Not Nefil!” I snarled the words and locked doors down while glancing around at the mess he’d made.

“Identify and release me!”

“N01-5-2. Identify yourself.” I snarled the words as their shoulders stiffened and the fight froze within them, locking their shoulders.

“N03.”

“Generation and designation?”

“Gen zero.” The words left his lips in a croak.

“So, you are the pure Naleucian?” My heart sped up, breath hitching.

They thought about it for a moment, eyes racing in their sockets before theyglanced up at me, lips forming shapes that didn’t make sounds. “Yes.” Their expression hardened as the fight left them and they sagged in my arms.

“I’m not.”

“I know.” They leaned their head toward me, pupils constricting and dilating before righting themselves, many processes going through their minds clear on their face as they concluded something. “Eighty-nine percent.”

“Sixty-four,” I corrected, earning a shake of their head while I scooped them up.

Their expression faded before snapping back to something akin to realization. “They are calculating in terms of trichromosomes. It’s impossible to get over 60 percent if you classify your makeup on three but only test two.”

“Shh.” I tried to soothe him as I settled him into a bed and coaxed my hand behind his head before rubbing his scalp in soothing motions. “Focus on healing. We can talk later.”

“No! No. No, you’re…” He clung to my arm and dug pearlescent claws into my scaled flesh, shaking. “You’re like me. Stay. The…the dilutes.”

My heart fell. I’d heard those terms before. Dilute. People with watered-down blood. Less than. “We don’t use that word.” The snarl in my voice made them freeze. “I don’t think that you know how things work. We’re all equal.”

“Don’t harvest. I—please. If I—if you do it. Kill me. Put me all out. Make it stop. The mind,” he said, gesturing toward his head. Watering eyes homed in on me, pupils forming thread-thin slits.

“Fuck…” I palmed my face and rubbed over my features before scooting onto the bed and drawing them into my lap. Their slight scent made my heart flutter, cheeks warm, and my tail curl with thrill. “I’ll be here. Please rest.”