Goddess of the Galacticide Episode 24 - Your Fault

Episode 24

“Why is this so difficult?” asked Linuka Omga.

Every single step. No break.

She had traveled to the Dark One’s home galaxy with her father and Me-Ruu, using their minds, fringe tech, and the causal connection these two had with locations inside the distant star cloud. Linuka acquired these connections during these wild adventures; but she felt unable to manage this alone.

Her father, though a brooding loner in her view, built impressive alliances; he never departed on crucial missions unsupported, relying instead on specialists and a well-armed crew.

“Are there other realities?” asked Cha Dzeeny. “Where our undertaking won’t require extreme measures?”

They needed the alien sphere drive. Maybe the Remnants, a Traaz smuggler, and the Marines were her little alliance. Outcasts for various reasons, destined to mend realities. They had to travel together. She shook her head. This was crazy.

“Believe me, Commander, if I had seen any, we would’ve taken that path. I think this is a leftover from the Causality War. The Võmémééř’s bombardment of the universal fabric has narrowed the cone of existence, leaving no scenarios advantageous to us. Had we allowed them to continue, there would be no room left for us to exist anywhere, anytime.”

“And killing this last diin will return things to normal? To before?”

“It will mend the tearing of spacetime which left entire realities disconnected. It won’t turn our reality into an instant happy place.” She forced a smile. “But it will prevent it from getting any worse.”

Cha Dzeeny grabbed his automatic, strapping it over his armored shoulder in one continuous, well-rehearsed move. “Let’s get it done then, Shaajis.”

Her smile continued, turning into a genuine one. “Nothing beats you down, Commander. Let’s put the smelly suits on and join the others.”

Linuka heard enthusiasm in her own voice. Either Cha’s attitude was contagious, or she had simply needed a short break.

***

The spacesuit was less awkward to slide into for the second time. She pulled the shoulder bulges forward, feeling like a seasoned professional, when they snapped into position without causing discomfort.

“Ancestor’s breath!” said Cha Dzeeny. “What is this?”

He held up his boot and pointed at the tip.

Linuka squinted. A green fiber of some sort. “Looks like a tiny plant. The planet likes you.”

Cha didn’t smile. “If it’s local, it survived decontamination. What’s worse is that this is not my suit’s boot. It’s one I wore inside the ship. How did it get there?”

“Our suits were clean before we left the airlock. Whatever this is, must have grown on your boot while we were in the dustbin.”

“What’s there to grow?”

Besides skipper Oonzu, the humans were the only lifeforms on board the Hikshuur, and had been for many spins after they claimed the dustbin as their living quarters.

“The dust!” said Linuka. Despite the marine’s best efforts, the former cargo compartment never felt comfortably clean. “Animal feces, or maybe leftovers from feeding?”

“Nreedz. Whatever we brought with us, it made it all the way inside. But how could it grow from ground-up animal feed to a plant so fast?”

“It’s a crazy fertile place, Commander. Maybe it’s not the plants themselves, but what’s in the atmosphere.”

“The fog of biomolecules?” Cha looked back to the inner airlock. “They made it inside. Oonzu won’t be happy to hear we contaminated his ship.”

Oonzu. Linuka closed her eyes and reached out to the Traaz still busy inside the old alien shuttle. Cha was right. Best to tell him what happened before they faced him in person back at their improvised dig site.

She couldn’t get through to him. Her forehead wrinkled as she increased her focus. The Traaz’s mind registered Linuka’s attempts, but it was too preoccupied. Pushing. Bending. Fighting.

“There is trouble on the shuttle site!”

“What trouble, Shaajis?”

The kind that made an adult Traaz fight for his life. “We need to go!”

They hurried the remaining suit components on.

Cha yelled, “Yots! Kso! Biocon 1 protocol! Hold and await our return.”

He closed his helmet visor, shut the inner airlock and looked at Linuka.

“Ready?”

She nodded.

***

The suits prevented anything exceeding a jog. The soft surface made each hastened step a balancing act.

A few passes felt like endless shifts. They should have reached the site’s entry shaft, even at this clumsy tempo.

“Where is the hole?” asked Linuka.

“There.”

Linuka thought Cha pointed at the spot, but he handed her his sidearm instead. She took it, an unconscious reflex of grabbing an object offered to someone. The gun felt solid but lightweight. It felt odd in her grip. She led warriors into battle in the largest galactic conflict in human history, but had never fired a shot.

“Look at the movement,” said Cha.

Her eyes followed where he pointed his automatic. The ground. It flowed. Moved. Converged. Slithering vines covered the sharp edges of the entrance ramp they had forced into the green surface. They streamed down the descent. They grew!

“The entrance is closing! This… growth will trap our crew.”

Her helmet muffled the cracks, but the sudden sound still startled her. Green foam erupted from the narrowing entry hole. Cha Dzeeny fired burst after burst. He is trying to cut off the vines. For a moment, the organic flow toward the hole slowed, then stopped. Is it working? Instead of growing down, several vines now grew up, then snapped down toward the human duo, one firing their gun, the other stunned by the spectacle.

“Magii, it’s coming for us. Shaajis, fall back!”

This is your fault, said the voice inside Linuka. Then she felt her suit harness being pulled back from behind.

“Fall back!”

Cha dragged her along, away from the vines lashing about, as if dodging the bursts his weapon still spit into the greenery.

The ground bulged. The plant surface under the menacing vine tentacles threw ripples like the bedsheets the mystics made her air out and fold as a child. A wave reached Cha and Linuka, propelling them off their feet. Their world turned upside down. Darkness.

Linuka had fallen headfirst into the ground. The tight, unbendable neck ring connecting the heavy helmet with the rough torso harness saved her neck from snapping. She felt the compression of her spine and the flood of panspermic compounds saturating her body, repairing the micro-fissures.

She pushed against the ground with all her human strength. Her Uurmi seemed content with repairing her body, but not helping her, offering to take over. It’s your fault. She broke her helmet free from the ground, looking around through the green goo trickling down the visor. Cha Dzeeny grabbed her ankle. Her arms gave in, and she fell flat on her stomach and got dragged at an increasing pace. What was he doing?

More cracks. “Stop, Commander, let go of me!” Linuka tried to turn. She saw Cha in the distance, halfway sunken into the ground, firing his weapon at an onslaught of leaves and tubes and vines grabbing him from below like a predator catching its doomed prey.

She grabbed her leg to pull herself into a better angle to see what dragged her. The vine knotted around her calf was as thick as her suited leg. The forward movement stopped, and her leg was pulled underground at a steep angle. Unlike the harness, her lower suit was comfortable, but soft. The pain from her splintering leg bones shot heatwaves up her body.

Help me, she thought. Her Uurmi had taken over her body in less dangerous moments. As she sank into the swirling plant mass, she received no answer from her lifelong companion. The nagging voice, vying for more control since she could remember. Always present to defend their mutual home, her body being mangled by the Green Wave, the planet they wounded and who did not forget or forgive.

It always saved me, she thought. It doesn’t want to die.

Unless it found a new home. A better host.

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