Goddess of the Galacticide Episode 14 - Package and Drag

Episode 14

Linuka Omga witnessed the dead rising from their bunks.

The ‘abort’ procedure seemed to release the men and women from Cha Dzeeny’s unit one by one from the deep coma it had confined them to. Everyone appeared confused at best, most unable to stand, or even sit. Linuka darted through the lab, preventing a few of the awakened from sliding off their bunks onto the rubbery black floor.

Two young males showed no movement at all. Even with the mind link cut and their connection cap removed, they could no longer rejoin their comrades in the world of the living.

“What date is it?” was the most common question.

“201/1249 AEG? That can’t be. We have been in there for orbits!”

One orbit equaled 1000 spins, or about 500 local rotations of the Assembly moon. Only 20 rotations had passed since the verdict condemning this group to be experimented on. While their estimates differed, the marines seemed convinced they spent significant time in the comatose state, with only a computer system feeding their brains input.

“I know her.” Cha Dzeeny was one of the first to stagger around the lab, as if he had to re-learn to walk. He pointed at the lab technician lying on the floor, her unnaturally angled neck showing she would never get up again.

Cha looked at Linuka as if considering her melee abilities. “Your work, my Shaajis?”

Technically not, thought Linuka. But explaining how her panspermic symbiont controlled her body and used it to kill the young woman was too much to explain to the dazed marines. She nodded.

“You’re the Shaajis?” asked the woman whose nametag spelled ‘Yots’.

The awakened marines froze. Weary eyes gazed at Linuka. She knew this sudden onset rigidity all too well. People untrained in formal etiquette, never expecting to run into a ruler or high priestess, not knowing how to react, what to say.

“I can be your Shaajis when you’re all well and safe. For now, I’m just the girl breaking you out. Commander Dzeeny, please organize your unit into a group that can move behind me as one. Go where I go. Move when I move. Be as quiet as you can. I know a path to the roof, where transport awaits us. We have little time.”

“You heard her,” said Cha, and the group seemed to jolt into action as if they had missed the clear commanding voice of their leader. “Everybody feeling stable enough to walk, help someone who can’t. Single file when possible. Four volunteers for carrying our dropouts.”

Every marine conscious raised their hand, and Cha Dzeeny made a quick selection. The chosen lifted their two lifeless comrades off the bunks, handling them with great care, readying them for transport.

“Arm over shoulder?” asked one volunteer.

“You’re too weak,” said Cha Dzeeny. “Package and drag. Look for flexisheets or biofoil.”

Cha Dzeeny called them ‘dropouts’, but the fact the unit would take their dead along, even when half of them looked like they needed to be carried themselves, showed great respect for their fallen. Traaz warriors would do the same. Linuka had left her own father behind in a collapsing universe. Whatever admiration this group had for their Shaajis, she deserved none of it.

“A single wrap of foil, boss. Hardly enough for one.”

Cha pointed at the dead technician. “Take her lab coat.”

As carefully as the two prepared the clear foil they found to improvise a dragging blanket, so brutal were the other marines in ripping the overcoat off the technician’s lifeless body. “Let

go, you kaats!”

Nasty, thought Linuka. No one cursed in Old Galactic except to express their lowest primal wrath. Linuka must have looked shocked, as Cha Dzeeny said: “Apologies, my Shaajis.”

She shook her head. “Not needed. Just surprised your team hates that woman so much. What did she do?”

“She was an instructor,” said Cha Dzeeny. He seemed to struggle with his next words. “They sent her in to prepare us. For the… most disorienting experiments.”

“Disorienting?” asked one marine, letting the corpse who had finally given up the lab coat ungraciously slump back on the floor. “Whenever this monster appeared, we lost a man!” He spat in the technician’s frozen face.

Linuka hoped the marines wouldn’t run into any of their other tormentors on the way to the roof access. The route was straightforward, and clear of personnel in most realities she had seen, but their time window for an unopposed escape was closing.

“We need to leave,” said Linuka. “Is everyone ready?”

She waited by the door, and the marines formed a line behind her, some able-bodied in the front, the dead being dragged on the improvised blankets, Cha Dzeeny in the rear, ready to help stragglers. He nodded.

They made good progress toward the elevator, which would bring them close to the roof access. Linuka stopped before each turn, re-examining the adjacent realities for details she might have overlooked, like the lab tech surprising her. That woman looked so innocent. Did Linuka’s Uurmi sense she was a ‘monster’ as the marines called her? The symbiont felt aggressive in its takeover, reducing Linuka to being a guest in her own body, but maybe it saved her life. It wouldn’t be the first time.

The first batch of marines filled the elevator cabin, and she sent it off to the top floor.

Cha Dzeeny joined her at the closing elevator door. “No guards, Shaajis?”

“Not in this part of the building. The main Isonomih core body production facility was heavily guarded, but it seemed this building was an afterthought. Looked like some urban planning office from the outside, not a secret lab facility.”

“Underground bunkers seem suspicious, I guess,” said Cha. “A mundane lab offers deniability. The Assembly likes to hide its crimes in plain sight.”

Klaxons echoed through the hallway. The lab complex’s alarms got triggered. The realities’ event horizon for a safe escape was drawing to a close.

“We hid the body,” said Cha, “and no one saw us!”

“Our transport landing on the roof marks the end of the stealthy part of the escape. We need to scramble!”

The elevator returned, and the remaining group piled inside. A few floors above, everyone lent a hand in pulling the dead up a loading ramp opening to the roof, next to a small landing pad.

There she was. Oonzu’s ship was uncompromisingly utilitarian, yet still a beautiful sight to behold for the escapees. Not only did the smuggler have perfect timing, he also finessed the vessel—too large for the landing pad—onto the roof with one smooth, unhesitating approach.

“This is our ride,” said Linuka. “The skipper’s name is Oonzu. Don’t be alarmed by his appearance. He is a Traaz.”

The murmur justified Linuka’s warning. Traaz were not a rare sight in human-settled space anymore, but her fellow bipeds never failed to show unease around the bulky eyeless silicates, able to morph their dense bodies. They did not have to show their rows of diamond-tipped crystal teeth to invoke the rock monster legends of old, scary stories of an ignorant age.

“Shaajis trusts him,” said Cha Dzeeny, “so we trust him. Get in the rig, marines!”

Cha ushered his unit up the freighter’s ramp. “My Shaajis. I can’t tell you how much it meant that you came for us. Where to, if I may ask?”

“Home,” said Linuka.

“To Dziilaa Sok? We are yours to command, Shaajis, but is that wise? You’ll be arrested—or worse.”

“Commander,” said Linuka, smiling, “we’ve got work to do, realities to save. Nothing we do from here on will be ‘wise’.”

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