Goddess of the Galacticide Episode 73 - No Sanctuary

Episode 73

The lab door slid open, its frame scraping off the sticky alien blood, and the lifeless branch fell on the floor.

Cha Dzeeny’s eyes darted across the brightly lit room, his new weapon too heavy to match the direction of his gaze. The strip beam concentrated the power output of a ship gun into something barely portable. His right hand tightened around a grip with a depressible surface at its rear end, a mechanism that had to be the trigger.

No movement. His equipment used to have a visual augmentation visor, life scanners, and all kinds of tech to support what he was left with—two eyes, getting watery from not blinking.

Cha stepped forward, keeping to the left lab wall. Islands of tall equipment dotted the room, perfect for hiding an attacker.

He swung the strip beam to his right. A faint whirring sound, probably coming from a large, polished metal tank. Some of this tech was standard medical testing lab machinery, so mundane that even an automatic-slinger like Cha could recognize it. Other devices looked bizarre. Not alien-made, just strange. The whirring stopped, followed by a few clicks, then the tank setup fell silent again.

Cha’s scan of the room was complete, and whoever killed Terg’s guard was no longer here. Unless…

He pointed the beam at the tank. Large enough to fit several humans, or one large alien. He stepped closer, and the whirring began again. The tank’s stout cylindrical shape had no obvious opening, no hatch, no hinges to open. A round viewport stuck out, looking like it had been bolted on as an afterthought. Cha leaned forward to peek inside.

Memories hit like a cold shower at high pressure. He was a Royal Guard. No, he was a Levy Fleet marine. He led people. They trusted him, then he misled the same people into a mutiny. A verdict. Shame. A prison. The Shaajis had a freighter waiting on the rooftop. The freighter was piloted by a Traaz.

He turned away from the viewport, breathing heavily. Inside the tank was skipper Oonzu, motionless, white tubes coming out of his dark mouth pit.

Oonzu had flown them across the spiral arm, joined their gang of outcasts and fugitives. He had been an ally, a comrade-in-arms. What was he now? An experiment? A sample?

The hallway was no longer silent. Faint yet deliberate steps closing in. Many legs. The dead guard’s relief?

Cha pressed his body against the tank, the strip beam aimed at the open door. The carnage next to it was hard to miss. Whoever decided to join him here would enter this room on high alert, ready to shoot first and ask questions later.

No click-clack, but pairs of boots on metal. Shuffling of body armor and gear. The spores sang into his ear of grim determination and foul language. Levy Fleet Marines. His security guards.

“Friendly,” he yelled.

“Kshech nreedz, boss. Are you alright?”

Cha moved slowly into the line of sight of the new arrivals. Three guards from the checkpoint appeared next to the alien carcass.

“I’m solid,” said Cha.

“What happened here?”

“Don’t know. I followed a green blood trail from the foyer.” He pointed at the alien. “Found this lab and him—dead.”

He lowered his weapon. “Did Baaii send you?”

“Yes. She was with the Prophet. Can you believe it?”

His partner was alive, the Prophet was safe. Three pairs of eyes stared at him, awaiting his orders, clear guidance on what to do next, relief from confusion. They hadn’t even seen the worst yet. The Goddess had to know about this lab and who was kept inside. Samples were taken here, blood from the Prophet, and whatever this sick setup pumped out of Oonzu. None of this was hidden somewhere in the Remnant’s tech buildings, not in the rattling alien factories, but a short walk from Linuka Omga’s living room. She had to know.

“We check on the Goddess. Whoever did this might still be in the building. File on me.”

***

Cha led the team back through the hallway and into the archway leading to the oversized living quarters. Each lungful of pollen smelled of fear and unanswered questions. He had walked through here recently, but his guards had never even entered the foyer of this building, let alone intrude on the refuge of the Divine. He had nothing to offer them but the illusion of doing the right thing, of having a plan. If the Goddess knew, her closest bodyguards must have known, too. That alien didn’t get killed because he stumbled upon the lab; he was wounded inside the foyer. Who was the intruder? And how would the Goddess react once she realized where Cha and his crew had just been?

There was safety in numbers. These memories were of violence and danger, but strangely comforting. If Cha had a wegker for each room he entered in a close-quarters formation, he’d die a rich man.

The absence of the Goddess made the sparse echo chamber of her quarters even more eerie.

Cha’s team took in the scale and weirdness, then reported “clear.”

Everything was exactly how he remembered from his recent visit, nothing added or missing, nothing out of place or flipped over, no sign of struggle.

“We got a door.”

One security guard gestured toward a wall opening. Cha remembered it neither from last time nor from one pass ago, when they entered the room. A sign to follow, an illusion, or the collapse of the illusion which hid it from sight?

People fear nothing more than the unknown. He had always dismissed that as philosophical nonsense, spouted by people who had never been under fire. Right now, he would gladly take on an enemy force over the barrage of questions, followed by an onslaught of ignorance.

“Follow me.”

A man and his strip beam. That was all he could do.

***

The next room was built and furnished much closer to human scale. A square mattress in its center, perfectly aligned pillow-rolls along one side. An unused bed—or freshly made.

“We shouldn’t be here.”

The guard was right. The Goddess should be here, or her guards, servants; whoever made the magiis bed should be here. Cha had patrolled the colony for orbits, like a machine, every spin, always looking for changes, dangers, trouble. During the two spins his focus had been on the Prophet, his dreams had been invaded, and the core of the colony deserted while he was happily cooking dinner. He thought of an Old Galactic curse, but suppressed it.

“Movement at the door. Living quarters.”

Somebody had followed them. Another group of legs. Baaii had sent more reinforcements after them. Cha was about to lower his weapon when the legs appeared in the doorframe, all thirty-eight of them. Terg. The clickety-clack wasn’t a careless noise made by him and his speeder-sized guards out of incompetence; it was deliberate to lull anyone into believing the aliens were clumsy.

Terg appeared to be anything but. Green ooze dripped off his rightmost branch, an oversized cleaver and a strip beam held in his left branches. The ‘useless’ administrator got alarmed, checked on his subordinate, found him dead in the lab, and then followed Cha’s steps—securing the Goddess’ quarters.

Cha had no way of explaining to the multi-legged war machine why the humans were in the Divine’s bedroom, and—most importantly—why Cha was holding Terg’s dead guard’s weapon.

Goddess of the Galacticide continues on this website with new episodes each Tuesday.

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